


The Devil You Know

by hellraiseher



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game), Halloween Movies - All Media Types
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Dubious Consent, Enemies to Lovers, Eventual Smut, F/M, Power Play
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:20:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 47,943
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27140324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellraiseher/pseuds/hellraiseher
Summary: Three years after that Halloween night, Laurie strives to live a semi-normal life, haunted by the memory of Michael Myers whose name still proves synonymous with fear. But in the Fog, where they are both trapped in the same cage of cyclical death, Laurie learns that the only way of liberating herself from fear is by controlling him.
Relationships: Michael Myers & Laurie Strode, Michael Myers/Laurie Strode
Comments: 68
Kudos: 146





	1. Falling

**Author's Note:**

> As the tags point out, this is an all out Laurie/Michael fic. Taking only the original 1978 movie into account, continuity wise they are not brother and sister nor will there be any references to any kind of familial connection between the two. I've been into the Halloween franchise for a While, am generally weak for villain/heroine pairings and it just so happened that DBD offers a lot of potential for a dynamic originating from 'stalker man targets a smalltown girl' to manifest and digress in a variety of ways... 
> 
> As far as DBD lore goes, it's obviously an ongoing, everchanging entity (harr harr). Elements like the End Game Collapse and re-worked perks won't be as stringently defined, the exact terms and conditions for perks and add-ons (such as Decisive Strike, Fragrant Tuft etc) will be a lot more fluid and consistent with the narrative and characters' actions rather than Happening as They Would In-Game. However, the Fog still has its own limitations and I plan to both include, test and see how characters can overcome those limitations. 
> 
> Another important consideration is that the chronology of Laurie and Michael entering the Fog lines up with the implementation of the Halloween DLC, meaning that the roster of survivors and killers is narrowed down to the original four/three and The Last Breath chapter. The cast will gradually expand through subsequent and later chapters in this fic. 
> 
> I've rated the fic Mature for now but it's likely to increase to Explicit when smut elements become more prevalent. The tag of 'dubious consent' I've put is really just to be safe. I don't want to give too much away in regards to Laurie and Michael's relationship development but this is very much a Female Power Fantasy exercise and exploration of how both she and Michael adapt and change based on each other and their environment, which means growing in good and bad ways, naturally. 
> 
> Final note: I'm British English, so there may be a few stray 'u's, 's' instead of 'z' and non-US centric terminology in places. Usually I manage to catch them during editing but if you spot one that breaks the immersion, please notify me in the comments!
> 
> That's all for now... I think. Enjoy!

The children in the yard look too small to be able to scream so loud.

Laurie watches them through the kitchen window of the Doyles’ home. Some of the family’s furniture has already been cleared out and boxed up. The paintings of rural landscapes are removed, leaving faded imprints on the walls, shelves that once held a library of hardback books and vinyl records are emptied, and the mantelpiece ornaments are replaced with farewell cards. One card portrays a tawny, cartoon mouse dangling from a floating balloon and waving at the onlooker, bearing Laurie and her parents' signature. It stands in line with the rest of many sentiments; an organized display of goodbyes and new beginnings for the future.

Tommy is noticeably troubled by the looming upheaval from Haddonfield. Sitting on a patio chair, chin sunk into his neck, separating himself from the pandemonium of his friends weaving around the garden in their game of tag. Laurie sets her glass of lemonade down on the counter, leaving the kitchen to talk to him but when she reaches the patio door, she spots Lindsey rushing over to him – tugging at his hand and successfully pulling him into the shrieking fray.

Tommy soon starts grinning, easily swayed by the game of chase.

“So, Laurie, how are you finding college?” Mrs Doyle asks.

“Oh, it’s…” she searches for a better word than just ‘great’, knowing how unconvincing she’ll sound, “different.”

“I can imagine. Chicago’s a far cry from Haddonfield. And all those _parties_! It’s a mystery how anyone graduates.” She opens the fridge and retrieves a bottle of cream soda, pouring it into a tray of glasses.

Laurie laughs, it’s a thin sound. “Coffee helps.”

“You’re too sensible for all that anyway, right? What with how busy studying you are – from what your mom tells me – Oh!” Mrs. Doyle stops pouring. “She said you needed some Shirley Jackson for a term paper. I have a few copies if you want them, they’ll be in the garage sale box.”

“Mrs Doyle, you really don’t need to –”

“Pssh,” she waves dismissively. “Don’t be modest, it’s yours. Help yourself to _anything_ else in there. The box should be in mine and Dale’s room.”

Laurie nods, smiling out of courtesy. “Thank you.”

She heads through the living room, past the empty space where the brown couch was once placed, up the stairs where well-lit corners surround her. The windows are bright as summer and she can feel brief bursts of the sun caressing her arm and face as she walks by. Even in Mr and Mrs Doyle’s bedroom, the balcony doors are slightly ajar, letting in a balmy breeze that ghosts past Laurie’s ankles. Her eyes roam over the cardboard boxes stacked up beside the closet.

Her breath stops.

The louvered doors are now replaced by solid panelling, stronger than before.

_Could he have broken through those, too?_

She steps towards the closet, reaching for the handle. It easily clicks open, no resistance on the other side. Sunlight cascades into the claustrophobic space. Her periphery cannot trick her with so little darkness, but it also exposes the smudges of slight discoloration on the wall inside. Markings of fresh paint --- to hide the bloodstains left behind. Her left arm feels numb. She stares at a specific smear of pure white, offset against the beige-magnolia just like a scar on skin. It reminds her of a chalk outline in a crime scene; despite standing here, being alive, there’s tangible proof not all of her survived that night. A reality she has tried to rewrite over the past three years. Retaining her impeccable grades, volunteer work, staying on top of a full schedule, only to be faced with the truth now.

Annie and Lynda.

She slams the closet shut again, stepping away from the door. Only silence follows. She can’t hear her own breathing despite the flaring of her nostrils, nor her own heartbeat. There is nothing here to anchor her, even as she grips for the comforter behind her knees. Sitting on the bed, her legs feel weightless, insufficient to stand or sit using her own body. Deafening, the silence swarms around her, even when she squeezes her eyes shut and opens her mouth, her throat chokes on her own sound of nothing.

Instead, she hears a slow, dragging breath behind her.

Gasping, she opens her eyes and spins around.

Nobody.

The only sign of movement is the lace curtain stirred by the wind, waving at her. Almost invisible in the sheer light.

*

Laurie returns to the party not long after steadying herself, grabbing the first paperback she found with Shirley Jackson’s name on the spine and scurrying downstairs. Company was distracting, especially the controlled chaos of the children playing Twister in the yard. When Tommy slips -- trying to untangle his arms and manoeuvre his right foot to yellow, he blames it on his shoelaces and trudges over to Laurie, greeting her with a defeated look. She gives him a conciliatory cream soda.

“Lindsey always wins!” he huffs, taking a gulp of his drink but no happier for it.

Laurie ruffles his hair and smiles. “Probably because she does gymnastics. Besides, she hasn’t won _yet_.”

He doesn’t answer, scowling down at his glass and watching the carbonation fizzle. Again, he’s lost in thought, not bothering to straighten his bangs like he always does. “What if something bad happens in our new house?”

Her smile falters, and she wonders if that is all he’s reminded of now when he talks to her. Even though he compares her to the comic book heroes he reads, devouring each new issue more incessantly now than ever.

Swallowing, she buries her insecurity and kneels down so she is level with him. “Has anything bad happened _here_ since?”

His mouth scrunches up, brown eyes looking around as if he’ll find evidence to support his concern. “No… apart from that one time I slept over Lindsey’s and she got a night terror.”

She rests her hand on his shoulder and says, “Believe me, I know it’s scary, Tommy. But you’ll never be left alone to face something like that by yourself.”

He looks up at her, eye-to-eye. “What about you?”

“What about me?” Confused, her brow pinches.

“You won’t be all by yourself, will you?”

The question catches Laurie off-guard, but she forces herself to keep smiling. “No. I won’t be alone,” she lies.

“And Lindsey wins!” Mrs Doyle calls out. Lindsey clambers up from the multicolored mat with a toothy grin, pulling up her wrinkled cotton tights at the knees. For all Tommy’s chagrin at the inevitability, he runs over to her, beaming. Above them, a trail of smoke wafts from Mr Doyle’s barbecue grill, filling the garden with the smell of coal-burnt burgers and salty fat. Laurie inhales, the taste of it already in the back of her throat. She realizes how much she’s missed this – the constants of her small town, now welcoming her back and promising a homesickness that will linger like the smoke in her hair when she’s back in her dorm room tonight.

Later, when Laurie leaves the Doyles, Tommy hugs her goodbye. He makes her swear to call him since she won’t be able to visit him in Seattle, but she likes to imagine that once he’s settled somewhere new, he’ll no longer need her as a pillar. In contrast, Laurie finds herself much more dependent on Haddonfield; attending a college in the same state so she could easily visit on long weekends, being looked after by her mom once in a while, hearing her dad fix up his mid-life crisis Chevrolet in the garage. Knowing first-hand they were both safe. As much as they assured her that they were fine with whichever college she chose, ‘even if it was halfway across the world’, she knew they were secretly relieved she was only a forty minute drive away.

Home wasn’t as forgettable as she thought it would be after she left.

The streets are the same as ever, soothingly so, lined by mowed yards and trees shedding their August green. She avoids looking at a specific hedgerow, stare glued down the sidewalk straight ahead. Dusk colors the sky violet, steadily darkening, and she hugs the borrowed book to her chest, sensing the first chill of the night. Walking faster, she doesn’t want to drive home in the dark. She doesn’t want to look at the abandoned, time-worn house to her right, yet she can’t help glancing when it is behind her back.

Its boarded windows reveal not a single passing shadow.

Approaching her parents’ driveway, she sees the lights in her house are on and hurries through the door, thankful that she’ll catch a glimpse of her parents before she leaves.

“Hiya, hun,” her mom greets from the couch, clutching a mug of unsweetened tea. “How was the party?”

“It was nice. I got to say goodbye to Tommy, he was a little sad.”

A movie with Sally Field plays on the TV screen, the actress singing to a doll whose face is pressed into her cheek as if she were singing a lullaby to a child. Laurie cringes.

“Don’t even ask,” her mom rolls her eyes and reaches for the remote. “There’s a Joni Mitchell concert on soon if you wanted to stay a while.”

She would, if not for her nerves gnawing at her. “No, it’s alright.”

“If you hang on for your father, he could drop you back. I’m sure he won’t mind.”

“No, I need to get used to the highway.”

Her mom gives her the ‘really?’ look but doesn’t press any further. “Just make sure you call when you get back.”

“I will.” She gives her mom a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ll see you next week, okay?”

“Looking forward to it.” She smiles but there’s that poorly concealed maternal concern in her eyes. “Take care, hun.”

“You too!” And Laurie darts out of her house.

The only thing sitting beside her in the car is Shirley Jackson, the writer’s portrait on the back of the book staring up at Laurie. She almost can’t stop herself from glancing at it while pulling out of the neighborhood, driving past closed stores – the only one open being the new video rental. It’s eye-searing in its florescence, distracting her from the weight of Shirley Jackson’s gaze. A novelty cardboard cut-out of Darth Vader stares at her now, too, reaching out to her with a gleaming, black-gloved hand, as if the paper statuette could levitate her Ford with ‘the force’.

Someone screams. It’s shrill – feminine. Laurie blinks, straightening in her seat, her grip on the steering wheel white knuckled as she peers down the sidewalk cut up by the streetlights and darkness. A group of three girls stumble into view, their arms linked together as one throws her head back, laughing at a glass-shattering pitch. Laurie’s shoulders relax, watching them as she drives past, hearing their heels click against the sidewalk and watching their crimped hair sweep over their shoulders -- only covered by strand-thin straps. Something inside of her feels invasive and guilty, she could never imagine herself being as carefree and inconsequential. Maybe if Annie and Lynda… 

She remembers them brushing her eyelids with blue powder, dotting the ladder in her stockings with clear nail polish to stop it ripping any more, padding her cheeks with tissues to dry tear tracks, all while teasing her for crying in the school bathroom over ‘flunking’ a class _. ‘You got a C plus? That’s your first! We should be celebrating, really,’_ Annie chimes in the back of Laurie’s mind.

Remembering them isn’t so painful anymore but she can’t help recalling their faces and voices over and over again once she starts. She focuses on the road, willing them to disappear from her memory as she turns her attention back to driving. Switching the radio on, the host is midway through an anecdote, something about a trailer for a horror movie playing before a Disney feature, resulting in a crowd of wailing children. It’s distracting enough to keep her mind on what’s in front of the windscreen. Crossing through the edge of town, down the highway and onto more desolate streets, the headlights penetrate the shadows.

A soft orchestral melody trickles from the speakers, led by the voice of Dusty Springfield. Laurie turns the volume dial up, singing along to lyrics she knows from her turntable that rotated the song for a solid week. In the confined space, surrounded by four locked doors, she is entirely extricated from the world, independent from possible threat. Even as she glances at the incoming Smith’s Grove sign and discerns the grey block of the building through a border of trees, she revels in the knowledge that she is safe. In her rear-view mirror, she watches the sign disappear behind her. For the first time in a long time, she is alone and smiling.

Her gaze flickers back to the windscreen and the car screams to a stop.

Pale and inhumanly still, a figure stands just a few metres away from the hood of the car. Faceless – no, its back facing her. A man’s back, covered by a white hospital gown. His arms hang by his sides and she can just make out tendrils of plastic tubes reaching down his tricep like veins escaping his skin. Brown hair curls above his collar – shifting.

His head turns. A clouded iris finding her through the corner of an eye.

Laurie squeezes her eyes shut and pulls the gear stick into reverse, only opening her eyes to look behind her as she slams her foot on the pedal. The car reels back into an empty road, distancing her from the figure. Braking beside the hospital sign, she looks back ahead, only to see nothing. He’s gone.

Her limbs seize up. The only part of her that moves is her heart – beating as if it wants to break out of her ribcage. Trying to regain herself is almost painful, as if each of her muscles have to be unlocked at the joint just so she can change the gear again. Before she accelerates, the radio shrieks with bursts of static, white noise clouding over Dusty Springfield’s voice. Laurie winces, slamming her palm down on the volume dial to turn it off.

Body wrought back into her control, she turns on the two overhead lights, looking over her shoulder to check the backseat – even though the doors are safety locked. Empty. Precautions that are a necessity, even if she once disregarded her own habits as a paranoid overreaction to an innocuous thump in the night.

But it’s different now, she knows better than to disregard a hunch, to know how _real_ something is.

And she has to _know_ he is. Seeing was never believing as much as it was a question, demanding her to find an answer.

Reaching for the glove box, Laurie pulls out a flashlight and a Swiss Army knife. She breathes slow, counting the seconds as she inhales and exhales. Once a minute has passed, she turns off her engine, the inside of the car and road outside plummeting into darkness. Opening her door, she steps out onto the asphalt and clicks the flashlight on, locking the door as soon as she shuts it. If she left it unlocked, it was practically an invitation.

 _‘You stopping the car and **looking** for him is practically an invitation,’ _she chastises herself, the thought reverberating with Annie’s deadpan sarcasm. But she had to know it wasn’t just a hallucination, that she could trust her own mind, especially when her body betrayed her so often; tensing when a man brushed against her shoulder or startling at her furniture creaking when she lay in bed awake. ‘ _Maybe you’re just that good at traumatizing yourself.’_

She breathes, steeling herself as she points the flashlight at the dense thicket of trees.

Nobody.

At least nobody she could immediately glean from the shadows. The tree stumps were thick enough to hide a pair of broad shoulders, let alone a pallid face able to shroud itself as soon as she brought it to li --

A twig snaps.

Laurie shines the flashlight towards the sound. Staring through the branches, she finds nothing. Again. It wasn’t enough to just stand here, and the more she stood still, the more she wanted to move. Logic was no longer holding her back, slipping away as something else reached for her, coaxing her to enter the forest like a disembodied hand held palm-open through the trees. And she accepts it, stepping around the hood of her car and treading from concrete to earth, its coolness almost seeping through the soles of her flats. Once she passes through the threshold, she stops – inhaling and exhaling – then strides through the trees, following the pathway cast by her torch.

Soon, she can feel the roots buried beneath the soil, easy to trip over if she wasn’t conscious of each footfall. And with each step, she is less compelled to ascertain her own sanity and more compelled by curiosity – no, something more than curiosity. Hunger.

_‘He could kill you.’_

She thumbs her knife handle. _I could kill him._

She imagines the retractable blade in his neck, joining the scar from her knitting needle, and she paces faster. Any other time or place and she would ignore the thought, ashamed that the image of making him bleed (out of more than just self-defence) is exhilarating; guilty that she could anticipate hurting anyone.

But he wasn’t just anyone.

Despite the newspaper articles and court hearings; Michael Myers, the Babysitter Killer, the man in a mask who stood back up after being stabbed twice then shot six times. She only accepted he had a name just like any other because she had to hear it countless times in interviews, police and lawyers and councillors alike assuring her he was 'just a man'. No, he was somehow both more and less than human, and the only other person who looked at Laurie – unwaveringly certain of this belief, too – was his doctor.

Still, if there was one last inkling of rationality nagging at her, it would be the sense that everything feels so… pre-ordained. How, out of all the patients who have presumably broken out of the hospital, too, that only _he_ should be standing in the middle of the road while she was driving down it. How she has not heard a single other engine fade down the street behind her. How her skin prickles with gooseflesh, aware she is being watched just as he watched her three years ago, through the window of her classroom while her teacher lectured the class with an overview of A. E. Samuels’ _Fate and Free Will_.

Tempted, she stops in her tracks and almost turns around, yet she can barely bring herself to look away from what lies ahead. The forest is so opaque with the cloak of darkness, her flashlight only highlighting the shadows, that it no longer feels like Smith’s Grove is on the other side -- if _anything_ is on the other side.

Something is waiting for her, more than just him, and it is something she cannot name.

Her flashlight flickers. In the brief pitch-black, she spots a glimmer, a spark of amber ahead. Fire.

Walking faster, she strides towards the glow, her gaze glinting with its golden reflection. The failing battery of the flashlight is unnoticeable, the tool now lax at her side. Entranced, she weaves through the woods towards the fire as it grows and brightens, closer now, past the bark barring the light from her vision. Her steps both reckless and resilient, she breathes fast, blinded by something otherworldly and unfamiliar.

Reaching a clearing, the fire shines at its brightest, no longer impeded by the trees surrounding it. Branches hang from above, like crooked arms and fingers stopping short of the flame’s reach, shying away from the heat. Warmth splays over Laurie’s face as she slows, but it is not the comforting warmth of a hearth crackling on a December evening, it is hypnotic and primal – like bonfires she’s only read about in books detailing pagan festivals, a burning that could cleanse bone into ash.

She stops at the edge of the fire, her gaze never leaving the sinuous flames. Not even when slow, heavy breaths loom behind her back, muted by logs of wood spitting out smoke. Her flashlight and Swiss Army knife slip from her grasp, thumping on the ground as her hand reaches in front of her, seeking the flame’s touch.

It burns her fingertips and she recoils, snatching her hand to her chest. The pain doesn’t break the spell, however, nor does it alert her to the breathing shadow ambling towards her, its hand rising from its side just as her hand gravitates to the flame yet again. Consumed by a strange and unknown desire, she does not wince when the heat singes her skin and remains ignorant to the presence closing in on her, its exhaled breath stirring the hair on the crown of her head.

Michael grips her shoulder while Laurie plunges her hand into the fire.

She screams, and the world disintegrates into embers.

*

Waking up takes more effort than usual. Even when Laurie’s eyes open to a blue ceiling – no, white, masked by that interior blue light that only comes with the night. Her mind feels hazy, awareness of her surroundings blurred at the edges, only filled with floating questions. _Where am I? How did I get here? How long have I been unconscious?_ Pushing herself up with her hands, she sits, palms pressing down on a gritty, hardwood floor in an empty room. Completely empty. Looking around she sees no furniture, only patches of damp, textureless grime mottling the walls, as if the ‘abandoned’ look had been purposely painted rather than naturally worn by neglect.

With so little to inspect in the room, she turns her attention back to herself, looking down at her legs and visually motivating them to stand. She gasps, seeing dark blue jeans, flaring out over a pair of brown loafers. Instinctively, she clutches at her shirt: the powder blue blouse. Scrambling to her feet, she tugs at her sleeves, whimpering with confusion and alarm. She threw this outfit away years ago, right after…

There’s no blood.

Clean, her distress quietens, but more questions swarm through her head. _Did someone drag me here, undress me and redress me, was this some sick prank – a kidnapping?_ It couldn’t be. The windows were barely windows, only frames, easy to escape through. And the door -- there was no door. This had to be a nightmare. She must be in some morphine-induced sleep in Haddonfield Memorial. Maybe she crashed her car or got a concussion somehow, the substance of her dream made more tangible and vivid in a comatose state. Dreams were smoky, filtered by illusion, like swimming underwater or peering through a camera lens that hadn’t quite focused on its subject. Here, in this nightmare, everything held an undeniable clarity.

Testing her hypothesis, she squeezes her eyes shut, hands balling up into fists – willing herself to dream of anything else, to conjure her own room at home, to be wearing a patterned dress or a skirt and a black cardigan – one she bought after getting a high grade on an essay not too long ago. When she opens them, everything is exactly the same.

 _‘Come on, Laurie. You know better than **that** ,’ _Annie chides.

Pacing across the room, she searches for a sign, anything to jog her memory save for the resurrection of her clothes from that night. Heels clicking against the floor, she enters a hallway. A banister above a set of stairs is broken or removed -- in the same place where he…

Tommy’s house?

Now she recalls, the layout is the same, although everything feels more compact. Still, there is a familiarity that calms her nerves just a little, enough so that she feels confident enough to walk down the stairs, through the front door and out onto the street.

Haddonfield.

Yet… _not_ Haddonfield.

She knows it too well. All the homes are too small and closer together, like dollhouses being sold in an antique toy store. The road separating each row leads to nowhere, squared-off by a brick wall.

Someone screams, and somehow she already knows it’s because they are hurt. Though she can’t tell where, even as she strides down the middle of the lane, whipping her head around to glance at each picket-fenced lawn. Why are there hooks? Looming far taller than her height, apparatus fit for a slaughterhouse. Most unnerving of all, why was his house – the Myers house – on the same street as Tommy’s? Placed in the centre of the lane, doorless with only one or two windows in its façade boarded up. A lit jack-o-lantern grins at her from the porch, above a Strode Realty sign planted in the ground. Her dad got rid of that, never managing to sell the house, not so soon after --

Another scream, the same as before – a man’s, bellowing from inside. 

He couldn't have... but if this was a nightmare...

“No, no, no…” She clutches her head, turning away and stumbling aimlessly towards the sidewalk, blinking repeatedly as if everything will revert to normality. 

“Oh, crap, we’ve got another one.”

Laurie looks up at the voice. A girl in sneakers and athletic gear stands in a doorway.

“Quick, come inside!” she half-whispers, half-yells, motioning for Laurie with her hand.

Desperate, Laurie follows as the stranger commands, rushing into the house. A mechanical, churning sound reverberates through the floor above.

“Listen, I gotta help Dwight, but Claudette’s upstairs. Just help her with the generator – I mean, don’t because you’ll just mess it up and then he’ll know you’re…” She talks with her hands a lot. “Just… ask Claudette, she’ll fill you in.” And then she’s away, sprinting out onto the lawn with the grace of a girl who’s been running marathons all her life.

Dumb-founded, Laurie’s confusion is barely abated. She’d never seen the girl around Haddonfield, and it was the kind of place where everyone made an effort to know their neighbor’s name.

_‘Laurie, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.'_

Desperate for a semblance of guidance, Laurie does as the girl directed, climbing up the stairs and following the whirring noise of the... generator? Turning a corner into a room, she spots another girl crouched beside the machine, her thick brows knit in concentration as her fingers pry through tangled wires. She must be Claudette. At Laurie’s arrival, she yelps, although it is too mousey and quiet to alert anyone to their whereabouts.

“The – the girl downstairs. She said…”

“You’re new.” The girl – Claudette – says, awe-struck. 

“Yes? Wait, no. I live here… this is Haddonfield.” _I think._

Claudette’s eyes widen slightly. “Are you sure? No one here ever recognizes… Never mind. What’s your name?”

“Laurie.” At least she could be sure of that.

“Well, Laurie, I’m Claudette. Take a seat and I’ll try to explain everything as best as I can.” She pats the ground at her side, as if she's about to talk her through solving an algebra equation.

Laurie crouches down on her haunches, close enough so that they were both within whispering proximity.

“You know how to play hide and seek, right?”

She swallows. “Yeah…”

“Just imagine we’re playing _that_ but the seeker wants to kill us.”

Her eyes widen. She didn’t have to just imagine it, she could remember.

“And to kill you, they have to hurt you enough so then they can hang you on a hook, until one of us _un_ hooks you.”

“That explains the -- outside…”

“Right! And to make sure we don’t die, we have to fix five generators to power up the gates –"

Laurie can’t help interrupting the barrage of instructions. “This is too morbid. I’m not really here, am I? You’re not – none of this is real.”

Claudette gives her a sympathetic look. “I know it’s difficult to process, especially when you’ve been thrown into it. Usually we meet newcomers at the campfire. But, please, just go along with it. In the end, we don’t, like, _die_ – die. It’s temporary, like –”

The information is dizzying. “No… this isn’t happening. Not again.” Laurie stands up, backing away towards the wall, her palms digging into her thighs – she can feel that. More surprising, she can feel Claudette gently grasp her arm.

“Please, Laurie, just –”

Silence cuts her off, so deadly that they share the same look of devastation, as if they both hear a funeral bell tolling throughout the neighborhood.

“Dwight.” Claudette whispers, letting go of Laurie’s arm.

Footsteps rush up the stairs and Laurie immediately shies away towards the open window.

“It’s okay, it’s just Meg. You’ll know when it’s –”

“The killer… he has a…” Meg struggles to form a coherent sentence while catching her breath.

“Ssh! We know. What does he look like?” Claudette asks.

Dread already begins to coil in Laurie’s gut.

Meg hushes her volume. “Tall… knife… white mask.”

Then again, he couldn’t be the only murderer to wield a knife and wear a pale mask.

“Creepy… likes to – to just stand… watching you.”

Then again, Laurie’s quickly discovering she has nothing to gain from denial. “Michael.”

Both Meg and Claudette raise their brows at Laurie.

“He’s Michael Myers. I – he killed my friends and tried to kill me… three years ago.”

Laurie’s new acquaintances stare at her. Claudette seems like she’s struggling to come up with sufficient consolation, already knowing ‘I’m sorry’ offers only vague and temporary comfort, especially in their current circumstance.

It’s Meg who breaks the awkward silence. “What an asshole.”

The three women laugh, quiet but no less genuine, dispelling the heaviness of the topic.

“Okay, so we’ve got three gens left. Laurie, do you know anything about engineering?” Meg asks.

She glances at the generator, rusted metal encasing a mess of wires and line of levers. The look of it isn’t entirely alien, but she knows it’s inevitable she will make mistakes while trying to learn how to fix it correctly. Mistakes seemed like a risk they couldn’t afford right now. “I know how to change a flat but…”

Claudette interjects, “I could show you the basics.”

Meg disagrees, “No, we don’t have time. Look, I’ll just keep him occupied while you keep fixing this. Laurie, the best you can do for us is stay hidden. As soon as you start panicking and if they haven’t seen you, _walk_ don’t run. Running just makes it easier for them to track you.”

Laurie nods. Despite feeling somewhat useless, Meg has an infectious determination. Enough so that Laurie doesn’t feel the urge to try and convince herself this was only the stuff of nightmares. Claudette’s touch before, it was palpable in a way dreams cannot replicate unless someone was trying to wake her in real life. And even now, she can hear her blood pulsing, affirmation she was alive, at the very least.

“That’s my cue. Good luck!” And Meg darts off again.

Before Laurie can ask what exactly that cue is, Claudette turns to her.

“Can you hear that? Your heart beat?” she whispers, quieter than before.

Laurie gives her a bemused look. “Yeah.”

“That means he’s close. It’s like a warning, a chance to get away before he sees you.”

“So it’s… not really _my_ heart beat?”

Her pulse – or _the_ pulse – begins to fade.

“ _Uh_ …” Claudette is clearly stumped by the question. “Kinda? We don’t… This place, we call it the Fog, it doesn’t function like the real world… there _are_ rules but – we’ll tell you later, okay? Just, _please_ , trust us. Meg and I will do everything, just stay close to me until I tell you to hide.” Her hope is almost inspiring, if it wasn’t so forced, nonetheless it’s something to hold onto.

Claudette crouches down again, continuing her ministrations of mending the generator. Laurie shuffles down beside her, tucking her legs to the side, observing Claudette deftly match the frayed, copper threads of red, green and blue wires together. It looks as intricate as surgery, like remapping someone’s nervous system. The generator gradually churns faster and faster, its mechanism probably audible from outside the house, then like a clock hand striking the twelfth hour, it chimes to life and lights up each and every room.

Only then does Laurie realize it is her house. The telltale indication being the wallpaper imitating the same floral design in her parent’s bedroom, patterned lilac peonies wilting into a murky grey. She barely has time to lament the desolation of her home, however, as a screech pierces through the walls, echoing from the other side of the neighborhood.

“That’s Meg. I need to go help.”

“But –” Laurie grabs Claudette’s arm just as she steps through the doorway.

“You’ll be fine, Laurie, as long as you _hide_. Just get out of the house as quietly as you can, okay?” Claudette assures her.

“O – okay.” Her grasp loosens and Claudette scurries around the corner.

Laurie follows, breaking off from Claudette’s trail at the front door. Where Claudette rushes across the road, Laurie turns to the neighboring house, her footsteps more muffled by the grass. Careful, she does not give into the temptation of running. Stepping into a small garden, she spots another hook, unable to tell if the brown-red stains were rust or dried blood. Breath tremoring from her lips, she knows it’s more likely the latter.

Suddenly, that pulse begins to beat at the back of her mind. Swiftly, she ducks around the hedgerow, the foliage rustling against her shoulders until she stands still, peering through the cross-hatching of twigs. The pulse beats louder – closer - and she holds her breath, muffling her mouth and nose with her palm. Before this, she could never hear her own heartbeat, just a noise like rushing water, the blood surging through her veins. Now, her pulse is all she can hear, even if it wasn’t technically hers.

He’s on the other side. She can see his blue overalls through the leaves, his shoulders rising and falling with measured breaths.

Claudette saves Meg, and Laurie doesn’t question why she knows this without seeing it for herself.

He turns, what little she can see of him disappearing, along with the heartbeat.

Releasing her bated breath, Laurie sneaks past the hedgerow towards a dilapidated playground. A climbing frame creaks at her presence, along with a broken set of swings – the seats probably piled into the random collections of debris dotted around the park. The picture sparks a vague familiarity, but there’s no particular details that cement the playground belonging to Haddonfield, at least her Haddonfield. It all feels like a movie set, an impression of somewhere that could be anywhere. 

When she tries to remember how she got here, her memories feel cut away, like looking in a mirror and suddenly not being able to see her own reflection. 

Another scream of pain, slightly higher than before: Claudette.

Laurie freezes, mentally praying that Meg could save her. Long seconds tick by, time wasted while Claudette hangs helplessly and nothing happens. Alone and unsure, Laurie stares in the direction of where she is hanging. She’s not too far away, only across the road, just one house to the left. Meg might be running circles around him, unable to even reach Claudette without putting her at risk, too. Laurie didn’t understand why they were impervious to being killed while hooked but this was no time to question this realm – The Fog’s logic. She always hated being indecisive, too shy or sheltered to just act and let her impulse guide her for once. Hiding never helped her before and it wasn’t going to help anyone else now.

Screw her insecurity. She’s going to run, she’s going to save Claudette. Breaking into a sprint, she speeds over the sidewalk and into a yard, around a house and into the back garden where Claudette’s body is suspended off the ground. Not bothering to second-guess whether she has the strength to pull Claudette off the hook, Laurie just does, hands grasping under her shoulders and heaving her up, metal slipping out of flesh. A grunt escapes her at the effort and Claudette is released, her feet planting on the ground.

“Wait, no!” Meg yells to her left, from the other side of the fence.

The pulse suddenly screams in her ears, or Claudette does – the heartbeat now a cacophony pounding inside Laurie’s skull. Just as she lets go, Claudette is already collapsing to the ground. Silver glints in the corner Laurie’s eye. She reaches down for Claudette’s arm, hoping to heave her back up.

Laurie can hear him, breathing right in front of her – above her.

“You can’t, Laurie, just run!” Claudette shouts.

Admitting they were overpowered, Laurie steps back, spinning around before she can even catch a glance of him. Running away, abandoning Claudette, she can hear her cries behind her, followed by the same revelation Laurie shared with her earlier, this time unable to prevent the finality of Claudette’s death. Even then, Laurie keeps sprinting, unable to stop, staring straight ahead and darting around random corners, through doorless homes; trying to survive him again.

The pulse drums on and she quickly looks over her shoulder, only to see Meg on her trail, blocking her view of him. Unthinking, Laurie clambers onto a porch, into a house then up a flight of stairs, her heels slamming against unstable floorboards. Angling into a room, she suddenly stops. Gasping, her hands fly up to her mouth. Before her is a window frame containing the night sky, below it – a man’s body, his glasses cracked and smeared with blood.

“Oof!” Meg bumps into Laurie’s back, forcing her to take a step forward, her toe narrowly missing stepping on the man’s fingers.

Laurie reels around, about to run back for the stairs, but Meg grips her by the shoulders and looks Laurie dead in the eye.

“Listen, only one of us… can survive this,” she pants. There’s nothing grave about her tone, just cold and brutal pragmatism. “Jump. Keep running until you… see a hatch in the ground. It can be anywhere. He might catch up… before you can –”

His footsteps thump over the decking downstairs.

“But it –” Laurie protests, looking back at the second-storey window. She could break her leg falling on the ground from here.

“Jump! Go! It doesn’t hurt!”

Before Laurie can hesitate anymore, Meg pushes her. She trips over the man’s torso, pinching her eyes shut as she tumbles through the window, her hip catching the frame as she plummets down head and hands-first. Landing much sooner than she expected, she opens her eyes, finding she’s fallen on the roof of the porch.

Sighing in relief, she looks up, expecting Meg to vault through the exit with much more grace. Instead, she sees the back of her head rising through the air. Laurie shifts her weight from her side, sitting up, and any confusion is short-lived as she sees a row of fingers gripping Meg by her neck – strangling her. Petrified, Laurie only feels capable of watching as Meg shrieks, stabbed once, then twice – the tapered point of the knife piercing all the way through her back, between her shoulder blades then ripped from the cavity it has cut. Blood pours down her waist as she dangles lax and lifeless in his grip.

Michael throws her aside but his attention does not gravitate with the body dropping on the floor, he stares at a fixed target: Laurie.

She screams, a shrill and terrified recognition of the face watching her with its black and hollow gaze.

Seeing him again is unbearable. His lifeless mask, a shade of pale befitting a body in a morgue, silicone barely silencing his ragged and heavy breaths – as if the mask itself was inhaling and exhaling. His shoulders heave up and down with a rhythm matching the plosive pulse in her ears, deafening and disorienting. Trapped in his sight, she cannot look away, even when he steps forward towards her. Bones break under the soles of his boots.

She finds the determination to pull herself back, mewling with desperation as her fingers claw behind her for leverage, heels pushing against the tiles. Any distance she creates between them and he draws nearer, lifting his leg over the window frame. Stepping into full view, he towers over her, her height made insignificant by her disadvantaged position – almost on her back. Yet when she tries to brace herself to stand, her hand slips through thin air. Looking over her shoulder, her heart leaps into her throat as she finds she’s reached the edge of the roof, the solid earth a far way down. 

Remembering Meg’s guidance, she scrambles to swing her legs over the edge and, gritting her teeth, lets herself fall. True to Meg’s word, when she lands she remains intact, painless from adrenaline. Again, she runs, knowing it’s not enough. She needs a weapon or at least an obstacle. Spotting the Strode Realty, she grasps the wooden pillar, glancing back at the roof – only to see Michael is on the ground with her, just a metre away. The sign doesn’t budge, no matter how desperately she tries to yank it free. So she gives up, sprinting for more distance and crossing the street. The garbage cans! She could throw one in in his path, maybe even land a hit. Gripping the handles, they won't move either, as if they’re bolted to the ground.

Powerless to fight back or slow him down, all she can do is run, through a garage, around her house and to the yard. Everything blurs; she wipes away her tears. Her voice cracks to cry for help but remembers no one else is here. She is alone and lost in her own should-be home.

Suddenly, there is a humming from above, a sound like an unearthly chorus. On impulse, she chases the noise while he chases her, their joint path crushing blades of grass under their feet. She doesn’t want to slow herself by looking back. If his hammering heartbeat – _the_ heartbeat -- was any indication, he was too close.

Oblivious in her panic, she does not realize he’s near enough to strike her. Yet he doesn’t. Even as he follows her through the house and up the stairs, to a room where a trapdoor in the floor yawns wide open, beckoning for her escape.

She leaps for freedom, only to be wrenched away.

Vision a blur of dark blue and white and black, her back slams against the wall. Wincing, she almost manages to crane her head up but he forces her to himself, his hand closing around her neck. She can't breathe, unable tell whether he’s choking her or she’s hyperventilating from the chase. His grip is secure like a vice hewn out of iron or stone, immovable enough to keep her where he wants her. But she refuses to open her eyes, wheezing and whimpering and clawing at his bruising fist with her nails, kicking his shins with her heels, beating against his chest, flailing like a wild creature caught to be tied and suffocated and bled, starving for any air her lungs can salvage.

Realizing she can, in fact, breathe, she freezes.

Slowly, her eyes peel open and she willingly meets his vacuous stare.

Michael is a black hole. Staring back at him is like falling into nothing, his proximity so close that he eclipses the entire room around them, consuming the space with his presence - consuming her with his gaze.

Hunger.

No longer fighting, her fingers -- once tensed to scratch the back of his hand -- ease, and she can feel his blood dampen her skin, reminding her she’s not bleeding at all. The fist pounding against his chest rests but does not unfurl, absorbing the echo of his heart, beating through muscle and sinew and bone so the sensation reverberates against her right hand, his chest rising and deflating in a rapid tempo – equally as rapid as her own.

For each gasp of oxygen she takes, he mimics her, until they are both breathing in complete and vicarious unison.

His head tilts, leaning closer to her as if inspecting her face with a microscopic precision. She flinches, her arm tensing to push him away, and in doing so she feels the imprint of something solid and jagged in his chest pocket. Another knife? A key? She glances down, and he emits a sharp grunt and tightens his hold, as if contesting her gaze straying from his for a second. Appeasing him to reach her ultimate goal, Laurie’s eyes flicker back up to Michael’s and his grasp around her neck loosens.

His other hand rises, coasting along her left arm bridged between their shoulders. Laurie resists the urge to look at it, his fingers grazing over her elbow, almost imperceptible through the fabric of her blouse. Until he finds what he seeks, slipping his fingers through the tear he ripped into the cotton with his blade that Halloween night.

She had tried every lotion on the market to soften the scar, even make-up to conceal the persistent shimmer of the healed skin. Temporary solutions providing temporary comforts. Inevitably, however, she couldn't ignore it under the unforgivable glare of her bathroom light, or when she absent-mindedly stroked her arm in class, belatedly realizing she was tracing the raised line of flesh.

Michael does just the same, dragging his fingerprints over the mark he immortalized, his touch gentle and cruel as he ceaselessly assures her of its existence – of his existence. All the while ensuring she watches him just the same as he is watching her, even if she is glaring.

Exploiting the moment, she deftly squirms her hand into his chest pocket. He remains distracted, fixated on her face, matching her breath-for-breath as he thumbs the swathe of her skin. She grips the unknown object and clenches her jaw as its razor edges pierce her palm, her eyes still locked onto the lack of his own. Then, in two swift and decisive movements, Laurie rips the weapon from the confines of his suit and plunges it into Michael’s arm.

Warm blood cascades over her fist. Pulling the weapon from his flesh, it shines with a reflective gleam.

He groans, the admittance of pain muffled, and lets go of her.

Released, Laurie stumbles past him and jumps into the singing abyss. 


	2. Safe as Houses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laurie 'Young, Gifted and Talented' Strode struggles to improvise, adapt and overcome. 
> 
> And Michael is a toxic slugger.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So in the time between this chapter and the last it's been Halloween, I got a job, a national lockdown was announced, there's a new president and now a vaccine - wild times! My only constant has been this fic... If anything, the lockdown will (probably) allow me a lot more energy / time to dedicate to Laurie and Michael (as if I'm not already a verified Halloweeb). 
> 
> Also, I forgot to mention that in the previous chapter, the Dusty Springfield song Laurie is listening to in the car is 'Windmills of Your Mind'. I'm always reticent to name songs in fiction because I feel like the friend who hogs the aux cord... but the lyrics are too applicable to ignore. 
> 
> This chapter turned out Much Longer than I expected but I feel everything that's established is necessary. 
> 
> Thank you for the kudos and comments! And I hope everyone had a horrific Halloween!

Waking up is easier this time.

Although it is debatable whether Laurie has truly awoken or not. The vacuous passage between tumbling through a hole in the ground then suddenly standing on her own two feet feels less like sleep and more like simply blinking her eyes. She was elsewhere, in Haddonfield, and now she is here, in the middle of a forest, clouded by confusion yet again.

She can, however, remember everything that happened with a near-eidetic recollection. Haddonfield (but _not_ Haddonfield), Claudette and Meg – losing Claudette and Meg -- their compassion and tenacity robbed because of her ineptitude, Michael’s suffocating gaze as he entrapped her, his hand – her scar, stabbing him and the undeniable thrill of knowing it hurt.

Looking down at her fist, blood trails over her knuckles, trickling down the make-shift blade in her closed hand. She does not realize how tightly she is gripping the weapon until she brings it under closer scrutiny, opening her palm to see incisions lining her skin.

No pain, not even a sting.

Maybe she was numb from adrenaline, though it seemed past that point, especially when her limbs felt like they were carved from lead, aching to collapse on the familiar reprieve of her bed, bones begging for home. But even while exhaustion tugs at her, Laurie’s attention is stolen by the piece of glass in her hand.

Swiping her thumb over its face, she clears away the blotting of crimson to see her own eye, green and blood-shot, watching her.

The shard of a broken mirror.

Why would he keep this in his pocket?

Laurie couldn’t theorize at all (not that she would be able to come to any satisfactory conclusion anyhow), her thoughts interrupted.

“There you are!”

Turning at the voice, she sees Claudette – entirely unharmed under the slivers of moonlight creeping through the trees.

“We were wondering when you’d get here,” she says, as if Laurie is late to someone’s birthday party. “Meg told me about how he… Did you find the hatch?”

His hand – her scar. “Yes. Yeah, I got out.”

Claudette’s brow shoots up in surprise, then she grins. “I knew it.”

Laurie finds herself smiling, too, flattered by Claudette’s belief in her.

“What’s that?” Claudette nods towards Laurie’s hand.

Her smile flattens. “Oh, it’s…” She doesn’t know why she feels the necessity to lie. Ignoring the compulsion, she replies, “he started strangling me and I felt it in his pocket – his chest pocket. So I just grabbed it and… made him stop strangling me.”

Claudette’s mouth hangs open. “So you stabbed him, for real?”

Laurie swallows and nods.

Again, Claudette beams. “Wait ‘till everyone else hears this.”

Before Laurie can even ask who, Claudette grabs her wrist and leads her through the forest, towards a distantly resonant, flickering light. Soon, they arrive at a clearing, where four figures huddle in a group by a campfire. She immediately recognizes one of them, Meg, who is also untouched by any splattered blood, her back hunched over as she stares intently at what can only be described as twig Jenga. The other three are strangers. A boy with tousled, black hair in a mossy green jacket, another boy – Dwight, she remembers – although she hates the reason why she already knows his name, and a girl in a beanie, all of them squinting at their self-made game. They all look to be the around the same age as her, the image deceptively normal, as if they were just friends on a camping trip.

“Hey, Laurie _stabbed_ the killer!” Claudette announces.

Immediately earning the attention of the group, all of them look up, wide-eyed and bewildered.

“No shit!” Meg grins, standing to her feet. “How?”

Laurie coyly waves the mirror shard in her grasp, shy under everyone’s collective gaze. At the gesture, the rest of group suddenly convene around her.

“Oh, you’re bleeding.” Claudette lets go of Laurie’s wrist and disappears from her side.

“Where did you find…?” Dwight asks, his brow creasing together.

“I stole it from him. He had it in his pocket,” she summarizes, “here.”

Despite holding out the broken fragment for Dwight to inspect for himself, the girl in the beanie is the first to accept Laurie’s offer, grabbing the object and leaving Laurie’s hand empty. The mirror shard is passed around the group with a reverence befitting a relic, as if she just exhumed a fossil or found the sling used to defeat Goliath.

Claudette returns, wordlessly cupping Laurie’s bloody hand in hers and dabbing at her palm with dampened gauze. The contact is gentle -- comforting. “Since these three are too _distracted_ , I’ll do the introductions. Laurie, meet Jake, Dwight and Nea.” She briefly gestures to each one of them in a clockwise motion with the pad of gauze. Dwight is the only one to glance up and give Laurie a polite smile in greeting, the other two pawing over the newfound curiosity.

“Did you hurt him?” Meg inquires, a hopeful lilt to her tone.

“I think so?” _You **know** so_. “It stopped him strangling me.”

“Awesome…” Nea comments, her vowels weighed by an accent Laurie cannot pinpoint.

“So this means we _can_ attack them -- apart from just pallets,” Jake says.

“Maybe,” Dwight sounds doubtful. “Not _everything_ ’s that easy here, remember. There has to be some kind of… trigger. And I doubt _every_ killer is going to pocket a handy piece of something pointy just for our benefit.”

They discuss the matter with such a casual approach, like students assigned a group project for a debate. It almost lulls Laurie into no longer questioning this nightmare, the foundations of this reality both rigid and stranger than fiction, like this was all a challenge in a twisted game, strategizing how to survive someone who wanted to murder them, only for them to not _actually_ die. Meanwhile, Claudette is cleaning the array of cuts in Laurie’s palm, still painless but not entirely non-sensory; Laurie able to feel the meticulous pressure of her care.

“You said he was strangling you, when you –”

Nea is interrupted by Meg. “Come on, guys, it’s her first rodeo. Let her sit down and catch her breath first.”

“I was just wonder… right. Sorry,” Nea says, giving the shard back to Laurie.

“It’s okay.” Laurie had faced her fair share of interrogation, providing police with witness accounts while she was barely able to hiccup through a complete sentence. Maybe the experience had resulted in her being immune to the others’ inquiries and postulating, more confused by the bigger picture. Still -- she gives Meg a small, albeit grateful, smile.

The entire group gravitate back to the fire, perching themselves on the ground or on tree stumps. Claudette remains at Laurie’s side, despite no longer tending to her hand. 

“Sorry, we don’t have any bandages at the moment,” Claudette says. “Sometimes I’m lucky enough to find a first aid kit in a trial but…”

Laurie nods, assuming a ‘trial’ is what she just endured, yet she frowns with a question yet to be answered. “How come it doesn’t hurt out here?”

Claudette inhales a deep breath. “None of us really know. And what we _do_ know is very little…”

They take turns with recounting their experience to Laurie. How Dwight, Meg, Claudette and Jake all arrived at the same time, Nea later on, how during trials they didn’t just ‘die’ but were possibly being sacrificed to a monster or a deity or a demon called The Entity, how each killer had their respective ‘realm’. Just when Laurie feels a fraction of this hell is sinking in, they’re digging up a new topic, dizzying her with more unfathomable mysteries.

“Oh, and whatever you do, _don’t_ wonder through the forest,” Dwight cautions with gravitas.

“It’s not so bad. As long as you’re careful,” Jake shrugs.

“Jake once managed to bring back a toolbox from the warehouse - _out_ of a trial. He likes to boast about how he slipped past the Trapper a lot,” Meg jibes, her back propped up against a fallen tree, legs stretched out leisurely.

“Yeah, he’s a regular Bear Grylls,” Dwight remarks.

“Sure. I just love the taste of my own piss.”

Everyone laughs, including Laurie, although she doesn’t pick up on the reference.

Glancing up at the forest, she stares at the thicket as the others settle into murmured conversation, fading into comforting background noise. No pale, half-hidden face stares back at her, there is only the dark; opaque and impenetrable.

“And the… the killers have never come here?” Laurie asks, interrupting Meg’s animated review of a television show she has also never heard of before.

“Never. We think they’re… _tied_ to their places,” Meg replies. “Like, when we escape through the gates, they’re suddenly forbidden from following us past a certain point.”

Laurie slowly nods, her mind already trailing down a perilous path of more questions. So, in theory, she could visit Haddonfield? But that would mean Michael would be there, too. It was surreal to recall the town so time-worn and empty, any sign of humanity eradicated, leaving only an exoskeleton. The entire trial (as she fell easily into terming it) was like a perverse recreation of that Halloween night, this ‘Entity’ cutting open and salting a closed wound. Laurie believed the cruellest force she could ever be cursed with meeting was Michael Myers, however she was starting to suspect The Entity could win that title, and she had yet to even meet it.

In spite of worrying over the relentless uncertainties of this place, Claudette often pulls Laurie back down to earth, including her in the conversation simmering around the campfire. Claudette’s thoughtfulness reminds her of Annie and Lynda, when the three would go to house parties; Laurie would be too reticent to belong in the crowd and they would shoot down all her excuses to stick to the sidelines. She regrets not doing more while they were alive, refusing to skip gym class so they could try lunch at one of the new fast food chains on the interstate, too scared to break curfew every once in a while, missing out on concerts because she had a paper due the next Monday. These are everyday regrets, ‘what ifs’ that have occupied such a permanent place in her mind that she no longer needs to excuse herself in fear of crying in public.

(There was no point in convincing herself this was just a nightmare, even if it is… what use is it to hide under the covers when you know the beast is waiting at your bedside?)

Now, she has no idea when she’ll see her parents again – _if_ she could ever see them again. Not just homesick but bereft, stolen from her own life which she was trying so hard not to take for granted anymore. Laurie imagines her parents at home, her mom worrying about why her daughter hasn’t called yet to tell her she’s back in her dorm, her dad convincing her not to worry – that Laurie probably just forgot, both of them trying to shake off an insidious fear as they tossed and turned throughout the night. By Wednesday or Thursday, they would have no choice but to act upon those fears, sleepless from paranoia, calling Laurie’s college to check her attendance then, inevitably, contacting the police.

Laurie prays time is relative. If the Fog played by its own rules, death itself no longer a mortal threat, then couldn’t it be possible that time was just as malleable here, too? There are countless stories where children climb through wardrobes and clouds and mirrors into another world, and when they return not a single second has passed. She desperately clings onto that fantasy -- for the sanity of her parents.

Gaze unfocused on the crackling fire, she laments rushing out of her home so fast, envisioning her mom clutching her mug of tea on the couch, giving Laurie a final, trying-her-damnedest-not-to-look-sad smile as her daughter glances over her shoulder from the doorway.

Flames blurring, the tears fall warm and heavy down Laurie’s cheeks.

Before her head even falls into her hands, she feels Claudette’s arms encircle her in unspoken empathy.

*

Unsurprisingly, in her second trial, Laurie dies.

Jake and Nea are more self-reliant than Claudette and Meg, and Laurie doesn’t hold it against them. If anything, being left alone while she short-circuits the generator lifts the guilt from her shoulders – she doesn’t want to draw attention to anyone else’s whereabouts. Meg encourages Laurie to keep trying, though, that eventually ‘connecting the doo-hickey with the whatsit’ will become second nature. Yet, sometimes Laurie finds herself distracted when catching sight of Meg and Nea running the killer – the Hillbilly, from what they’ve told her – around in endless circles, until Laurie isn’t sure who is chasing who.

Each time the generator implodes in her face or she hears the killer’s chainsaw rev, she manages to slink away behind a corner. Her jaw locks at the ragged howl of the metallic grinding, rattling her at first, but she wills the noise to mute into a persistent agitation, like a mosquito buzzing around a room. More disturbing is the sight of him, his skin wrought over his lumbering body like stretched taffy, gurgling on his own air. He is the complete opposite of Michael. Loud, the chainsaw screeching out his location, blazing around the area like a wild horse in captivity. Somehow, this polarization makes the Hillbilly easier to accept. Even when he charges at her, too slow to hide herself, and the saw rips a jagged arc through her back.

The agony is blinding but temporary.

Normally, anyone would faint from the pain – she initially thought she would when the rusted chain tore through her flesh and splintered her spinal cord. But as soon as she’s heaved onto his shoulder, the agony numbs to an ache, until she’s skewered on a hook and it burns through her chest and she cries like a banshee, pain only replaced by the relief of Jake lifting her off and patching her up. 

Numb – agony -- again, numb – agony -- again, then she’s dispersing into the sky, as weightless and insubstantial as smoke.

If she had to liken it to anything, it’s not so different to period cramps.

The realm itself, compared to Haddonfield, was murky and grey-green, almost colorless, the central building not just dishevelled but in a state of eternal decomposition. Back at camp, Nea tells Laurie she ‘remembers it a little’ but then dismisses the cryptic allusion due to her ‘sleeping in many forgotten places’. At first, Laurie thinks it’s a morbid joke, chuckling awkwardly, but pales upon Claudette affirming it was not, in fact, just a joke. Laurie later apologizes to Nea - who waves her off, unoffended, and says, ‘sometimes all you can do is laugh at these types of things.’

The group do, warmed by each other’s company more than the campfire. Although Laurie’s smile still requires a forced effort, especially when one of Dwight’s references is lost on her. Once, she asks who Sean Bean is when he complains about the frequency of his deaths, and she receives a look of disbelief.

“Wait… what year was it – before you got here?” he asks.

Laurie, sheepish from a creeping sense of alienation, answers, “uh, nineteen-eighty-one.”

His brows shoots up, and she is soon bombarded by questions on whether she’s watched certain movies and television shows when they were first released: Star Wars ( _yeah_ ) and The Lord of the Rings (the cartoon, he clarifies – _no_ ) and The Shining ( _yeah, but she wishes she didn’t_ ). In return, he awes her with major events in the future; cellphones becoming an everyday commodity, 9/11, the internet (she struggles to wrap her head around that), MTV, video games becoming so technologically advanced that the characters and settings look like real people and real landscapes. It’s all a little overwhelming, Meg trying to dissuade Dwight from ‘infodumping’ so much, but Laurie doesn’t mind being treated as the new girl as long as she isn’t seen as helpless.

*

After her fifth trial (or her second she’s survived), Laurie tells everyone about that Halloween night in 1978.

They hang onto her every word as she wrings her hands and recounts Michael stalking her, murdering Annie, Bob and Lynda -- exhibiting their bodies like a haunted house attraction, only managing to escape him because his own doctor shot him. Yet, even in the real world, before the unreality of the Fog, he got back up before eventually being recaptured and incarcerated.

Everyone offers their own form of sympathy, whether that’s genuine condolences from Jake and Dwight or assurances from Meg and Claudette that she can talk about the incident whenever she needs to. Nea surprises her with a hug, expressing, ‘nothing that happened was your fault.’

Before Laurie can break down, the discussion digresses into whether the Entity can influence beings outside of the Fog, too, if it’s able to dictate someone’s immortality.

Laurie’s unbothered by the change of subject. She’s not the only one here who’s narrowly escaped someone – or something -- trying to kill her, after all. 

*

More often than not, she wonders how far away Haddonfield is (or Not-Haddonfield -- she trains herself to name it). Each trial after her first has occurred elsewhere, on farmland or in a gas station, every realm as aesthetically dilapidated as the last. She questions how close to reality they are, distracted by the uniform height of every row of corn and squinting at scratched-off labels on perishables in a convenience store.

It doesn’t take long for her to discover that the Fog is more accurately defined by what is _not_ here than what is. Yet both apply to her supposed home. She knows exploring it would be fruitless, like unlocking a chest she already knows is empty, and she knows that Michael will be there – which is enough to discourage her. At first.

The Not-Haddonfield becomes an intrusive fixation. Its absence permeating through her thoughts, hovering behind her like any hometown you bring with you after you’ve left it.

By extension, she can’t ignore the thought of Michael either. Their last encounter in the Fog doubled as their first, and she wonders if their separation is a tactic of this ‘Entity’ to destabilize her before she is forced to face him again. Laurie suspects her teammates have made a secret pact not to talk about him around her. When they return from some trials, they simply recount that it was him and who died, sparing the gruesome details (Nea often shushed). The consideration is sweet but makes her feel like she has a ‘Fragile: Handle With Care’ label stuck on her forehead.

This treatment is true in trials as well. Whenever she is teamed with Claudette or Dwight, they stay close beside her, and although she appreciates the support – helping her to mend the generators and bandage injuries much more efficiently, their insistent ubiquity makes her feel monitored, as if they’re waiting for her to make a mistake so they can cover for her.

_‘Or are you just put out because **you’re** not top of the class, for once?’_

_Come on, Annie. It’s not like that._

_‘Sure, Laurie.’_

*

She’s not sure if it’s because she faced a killer who was capable of _permanently_ murdering her before she got here, but she becomes desensitized to the Hillbilly, the Nurse, the Trapper and even the Wraith sooner than she expected. Or rather than being scared, jumpy and clumsy, she chooses spite – it’s more productive.

Unlike Michael, she never has to know their names.

*

Around the campfire, whenever the group chat or strategize or play charades to pass the time (if time could even be called by its own name here), Laurie sometimes feels her eyes burn at the thought of her parents. She blinks the tears away and distracts herself with small talk, asking Nea about Stockholm and Jake about surviving in the wild. The two have a dark, sobering sense of humor, often shrugging in the face of danger.

Meg’s guidance in trials also allows Laurie more independence, offering genuine encouragement before speeding off to distract the killer. It’s from her that Laurie begins to learn how to run away, zipping around sharp corners, knowing when to vault so she’s just out of reach, hiding next to a pallet to stun the killer. It’s an unforgiving process of trial and error, the consequences being pain and death but the _reward_ – that freedom, no matter how fleeting, when she sprints through the gates; she and her team just barely managing to hold each other together as they cross the threshold to their survival -- it makes it worth the suffering.

Especially when she finds no additional scars to join the silver line on her left arm.

That’s the thing: the physical wounds are temporary, too, as well as the agony.

She has not used the blade of glass again, worried that if she plunges it into the killer’s shoulder – no matter how helpful that would be – she would lose it. Its sharp edges are blunted by a wrapping of cloth, tucked away in her pocket -- safe. Sometimes, she unwraps it and looks at her reflection, the piece of mirror too small to offer a view of her full face, just her eyes; rounded by heavy bags from anxiety and fatigue that never wanes into sleep.

She never sleeps. None of them can. They don’t eat either, nor feel hunger. They just run – hide – survive, guess a theme tune Meg is whistling, run – hide – survive, play I Spy, run – die, Dwight and Nea argue over a split-second life-costing decision, hide – survive, dare each other to eat the can of jelly-thick meat Jake salvaged from Autoheaven, run – hide – die – survive – die – survive – die – survive.

The vaguest promise of stability for Laurie is the town on the other side of the forest. And she doesn’t realize how far away her head is in Haddonfield until she cuts her finger on the mirror shard, a painless drop of blood forcing her back to the earth she stands on.

*

One night, in a sequence of endless nights. Meg, Claudette, Dwight and Nea are in a trial, leaving her and Jake. Their conversations are always somewhat stunted, he’s naturally reserved while she struggles to keep a topic going, clearly distracted, and at some point he excuses himself.

Alone, she thinks of nothing else but the town beyond the woods.

_‘Well, I guess you can take the girl out of Haddonfield…’_

Hope and curiosity winning out over trepidation, Laurie gets up and marches towards the trees.

The journey sparks a phantom familiarity. She has done this before, climbing through the darkness of the thicket for a glimmer in the distance; a florescent, flickering streetlight. As if her purpose manifests in front of her from her will alone, she sees the road beyond the brick border, unmistakeable in its impression from far away. How she found it so easily, not stumbling into the grounds of the abandoned asylum or the warehouse, she doesn’t ponder on the possible reasons for long. Rationalizing the Fog was as helpful as asking for a response from silence, she was only left more confused and frustrated. What was the point in asking a question and not getting an answer?

‘ _And what **answer** are you going to find here, Laurie?_’

She ignores Annie in the back of her head, striding down the street with her back upright – trying to emulate an effortless posture of assertion and belonging rather than bowing her back from any predatory gaze or crouching down on her heels. Determined, she ignores the lack of hooks – no longer stationed in some of the yards, nor does she spare a glance at the Myers house, heading straight for her ‘home’ with her fists clenched.

The living room is barren of furniture still, no couch nor television nor her mom’s Steinway & Sons. But the size feels true to memory, she can easily pinpoint _where_ exactly each piece of furniture would stand. The television -- just a little to the left from the window, the floral couch sat opposite the screen and the piano -- by the stairs.

The unearthly emptiness reminds her of a recurrent nightmare she used to have as a child, where for no explicable reason her parents just moved out without telling her, taking all that made their house a home with them. Even though she knew they would never abandon her, dreams were able to instil the most irrational fears. She learned not to trust her subconscious a long time ago.

But now, awake in her own nightmare, all she has to trust is her own mind.

Heading up the stairs, she passes her parents’ bedroom – where it would have been – and notes that the wallpaper is now brighter, the printed peonies matching the same tone of lilac in her memory, as if the house amended itself since that trial. The new development only compels her to walk faster, hoping there would be something in her room to affirm it was _her_ room. With her footsteps beating unapologetically against the floorboards, she paces down the hall and turns into a doorway.

Nothing.

Not even her door to open. She always left it ajar, allowing her mom or dad’s calls to be heard if Annie and Lynda were on the phone or dinner was ready. Now, there is just unlit space, an expanse of dead air floating between four daffodil-yellow walls, specks of dust glistening -- listless in the blue darkness, with no bedside table or desk to gravitate to.

Stepping inside the barely recognizable room, Laurie’s eyes flicker around for any miniscule detail; the star drawn on the wall with nail polish – usually hidden by her bedframe, the one floorboard that creaked, the tiny crack in the corner of the windowsill. None of these signs call back to her.

If there is one piece of evidence above all others to scream this wasn’t her home, however, it would be that when she looks out the window, she sees the Myers house facing her.

Its exterior is uncharacteristically pristine. The walls are a coat of fresh white, clean of any distress or grey patches, the windows are true windows, nailed boards replaced by glass, and when she squints she can see the interior framed by curtains. Even from this distance, she can discern translucent white drapes, hanging as still as stone with no natural breeze.

The front door is closed, as any home in Haddonfield would be at night.

Indignant, she marches across the room and grabs her door handle.

A single, audible breath slithers through the gap.

Laurie freezes. There are two truths that steal her breath and petrify her:

One: she suddenly has a door.

Two: Michael is on the other side.

At first, she is typically terrified, gripping the handle tight and slamming the door shut. Stepping back, she glances at the perpetually open window, her only chance of escape if he broke in --

But nothing happens.

The door doesn’t rattle on its hinges, the handle doesn’t even turn.

Tentatively, she steps towards it and presses her ear to the wood panelling. Clear and constant, she can still hear him as if there were no barrier between them but his mask -- which only seemed to amplify each breath. She counts them, each inhale and exhale, and her terror fades – her fists white-knuckled with a force that grits her teeth, her nostrils flaring. Why did _he_ get to stay here? Why was her home no longer her own, while his resurrected itself? Why could he walk through her living room, up her stairs and wait outside _her_ bedroom? And there were no consequences at all, not a single boundary he couldn’t breach.

Furious, Laurie shouts through the closed door, “Haddonfield is my home, too!” and wrenches it open.

The hall is empty, save for her own voice, echoing her claim before fading into the pervasive silence.

*

When Laurie returns to the campfire, she overhears an argument through the branches. There is no outright yelling but the two voices are clearly in opposition, one tone raised and fervently attempting to incite disagreement while the other is monotonous, intent on dousing the fire.

“I didn’t _let_ her do anything, she can do whatever the hell she wants.” Jake.

“But it’s our responsibility -- _everyone_ ’s responsibility to look out for each other!” Dwight.

Jake huffs. “So if one of us jumps off a cliff then everyone else jumps off too to try and save them?”

“That’s not what I –”

“Guys! You can shut up now. She’s okay,” Meg says, the first to notice Laurie approach the campfire.

All eyes on her, Laurie crosses her arms, able to deduce she was the cause for debate.

“Where –” Claudette starts but Laurie interrupts her with her answer – adopting a conviction she has sorely lacked since coming here.

“I went home. To Haddonfield.”

A beat. No one speaks. Until --

“Why? He could have – you could have…” Dwight trails off, not truly knowing what _could have_ even means.

“Because I wanted to.” Her reason is flimsy and meek, especially when guilt starts looming over her for making the others worry.

“Did you see him?” Meg asks.

“No, I mean – yes… I heard him.” _I think._

“And then you escaped,” Jake states.

Escaped? There was nothing to escape from. “Yeah… pretty much.”

“You’re not hurt?” Claudette asks, barely concealing her disbelief.

“No, like I said I didn’t see –”

“Still, it was stupid,” Dwight interrupts.

It was. But Laurie hates the way her heart suddenly sinks into her stomach at being reprimanded.

“We still don’t know _what_ they’re capable of _out_ of trials, and if we just start strolling into…” Dwight’s lecture steadily falls deaf on Laurie’s ears. Again, she feels the initial helplessness fade, replaced by anger – uncoiling with its fangs sharpened to retaliate.

“I’m not made of glass!” she shouts.

Before she can apologize, immediately regretting the outburst, the world turns black.

*

The first color that bleeds into her vision is gold.

Suddenly she is no longer at the campfire staring at Dwight’s kicked-puppy eyes, but in the middle of a cornfield. It always takes a few seconds to steady herself when pulled into a trial, everything spinning – as if the world is orbiting around her, until it stabilizes and she feels confident enough to move.

Rustling through the reeds, she looks for a generator with sufficient cover, her searching gaze landing on a hay bale propped next to a tree. But before she ducks behind it, glancing around her, a newfound awareness flickers at the back of her mind, like a silent sonar beckoning to her from across the farm.

She can see exactly where the killer is.

Worse, she knows who; the shadow of his silhouette stalking through her consciousness.

He changes course, heading in her direction.

Could he sense her, too?

Erring on the side of caution, she is careful not to leave any tracks, switching her own course to the barn. She can already hear a generator. Peering around a haystack, she finds Nea concentrating on detangling a wire, and Laurie is both grateful and guilty that it isn’t Dwight. Nea regards her with a nod, which Laurie returns before crouching down to fix the mangled machine.

“It’s him. Michael,” Laurie tells her.

Nea frowns slightly, incredulous as to how Laurie knows this, but just replies with, “okay.”

Focused and efficient, the two wrangle the generator back together at a steady pace, scraping gunk off the circuitry with their fingernails, ensuring the belts are secure, not sharing a single word in their determination to get a head start in the trial.

Until Laurie sees him – without _actually_ seeing him – striding towards them, only a few meters away.

On impulse, Laurie grabs Nea’s arm and yanks her from the generator, her teammate emitting a ‘Wha –’ in confusion as Laurie leads them to safer cover beside a pallet. Holding her breath, Laurie chances a glance behind them, letting go of Nea’s arm.

He already knows where they are, bypassing the generator and marching straight for them. They barely have a second to scurry away before his footsteps thump around the corner. Laurie looks over her shoulder for Nea, only to see she’s gone, then, turning back around, a pulse pounds so loud in her ears it hurts.

His gaze is debilitating -- with one look he can turn her to stone.

By now, she has endured horrors she never could have imagined, stabbed and gored by saws made for cutting bark and bone, chased by ghosts and men alike, dying and dying and dying – briefly losing herself in that stasis between waking and sleeping; dark enough to make her believe there is nothing after everything. No afterlife, no memory, just an endless horizon of negative space.

Still, nothing comes close to Michael.

Even when he just stands there breathing, looking down at Laurie while she stares back at him, her own breathing irregular as she tries to get a grip on her own heartbeat.

She does not scream, her lips pressed firmly together. But when he steps closer, she automatically steps back, wary and poised for escape at any second, yet determined to stand her ground opposite him.

He’s… taller than she remembers.

“Don’t let him just watch you, idiot!” Nea shouts, suddenly appearing behind Laurie’s back.

Now it’s her turn to be pulled away, Nea grabbing her arm and tugging her in tow. Just as soon as Laurie flees from Michael’s gaze, she is gripped by her shoulder and flung backwards, wincing as her hip collides with the ground at an awkward angle. Nea cries out -- Michael carving a diagonal line upwards over her back, the cut swift and deep. He chases her into the cornfield.

Laurie scrambles to her feet, refusing to be dazed by his decision to throw her aside. Instead, she runs back to the generator in the barn and wrestles it to functioning capacity. Two are finished within seconds of each other but along with their chime comes Nea’s scream, hooked, the shrill noise echoing over the farm. Laurie sprints to save her, only to spy Michael patrolling Laurie’s route leading to the hook – suddenly altering his path.

Oh, he can _definitely_ see her, too.

“Shit!” she whispers, stamping her foot.

 _Think, think, **think** … Every problem has its solution_.

If she focuses on evasion, constantly creating a trail he could follow, constantly demanding his attention, she could maybe distract Michael enough to keep him off the generators and anyone else’s back.

With no time to think, she just acts, running in the direction she just came from. Soon, she hears the beat of the pulse, louder as she rounds obstacles of impeding trees and propped up pallets, her heels slamming against the dirt – snapping every twig, kicking up every fallen leaf. Nea is saved just as Laurie crosses into the cornfield, pushing the leaves away from her face, trying to avoid any generators. So focused on her course ahead, she never looks over her shoulder, until she can’t ignore his footsteps striding right behind her.

Suddenly, he stops.

Confused, her run slows to a halt, turning to look at him.

A head above the reeds surrounding him, he just stands still, watching her in complete inaction, ending the chase. She mirrors him, trying to deduce his strategy but only coming up with blanks.

“Laurie, what the hell are you – move!” Dwight orders to her right.

“I know what I’m doing,” she answers, clenching her fists while she doesn’t allow her stare to stray from Michael.

His head cranes from her to Dwight. 

“Are you insane?! He’ll down us all in one hit!”

“Then _go_ – make sure you don’t get hit.”

She can already see it: Michael adapting to the intrusion, his knuckles turning ivory around his knife handle as he returns to motion, stalking towards Dwight. Laurie’s teammate looks between her and Michael, conflicted, his arm reaching out to pull her away.

“Just run!” Laurie shouts.

Dwight reluctantly obeys, his arm falling back down to his side, then he disappears.

With Michael only a step away, Laurie breaks into a sprint again, narrowly evading his fingers splaying through the air towards her – his grip closing around nothing. Another generator sparks to completion. With only one hook, her hopes soar high, especially when she keeps him on her.

Vaulting over a low stone wall, she circles around a tree, emulating the way she’d seen Meg stalling killers to bide everyone more time. Just as Laurie hears the whistle of Michael’s blade plunging past her ear, she throws a pallet down, a guttural growl escaping him as it slams into his offending arm.

She _almost_ grins, sick with satisfaction. Finally, she feels like she gets it; how to play this game and actually help – maybe even win.

The feeling doesn’t last long, however, as Michael turns his attention away from her, striding off elsewhere – somehow faster despite still walking. 

Whether his patience had expired or he had caught sight of someone else, she didn’t know, but she wasn’t going to waste time playing guessing games. Quickly, she explores the outskirts of the farm until hearing the telltale churning of a half-done generator. Kneeling down, she makes steady work of matching wire-to-wire, only pausing when a bellow echoes from the other side of the cornfield. 

Dwight is heaved onto a hook.

“Someone fed him,” a small voice speaks to her left.

Laurie gives Claudette a bemused look. “What?”

“You know, how he just watches you and… the next thing you’re on the ground.” Claudette also begins fixing the generator. “It’s like his thing, right? The Nurse teleports, the Trapper – well, and he…”

“Stalks?”

“Yeah.”

Laurie’s face visibly falls, suddenly feeling stupid.

Claudette notices. “I – we thought you already knew. With what you said about him almost killing -- before…”

“He followed me but I didn’t know he got some kind of _power_ from it. And that was then -- _there_ , you know what I mean, not... here.”

Claudette frowns, as if realizing the price of protecting Laurie’s mental wellbeing by neglecting to detail any trials against Michael. “I should have told you before. I’m sorry, I just thought…”

“It’s okay.” Laurie swallows her disappointment – more in herself than Claudette. “Let’s just focus on this.”

Claudette nods, and the two continue their ministrations in awkward silence. Not that trials were ever appropriate for chatting about the weather or resolving miscommunications, but there is a tangible barrier between them.

“You do need to give yourself more credit though, Laurie,” Claudette says.

Laurie’s brow pinches, glancing at her.

“This shit is _hard_. What we have to do is unimaginable. I was a wreck when I first got here. Every time we were in a trial I just hid and cried and tried to convince myself none of it was real for as long as I could… but you – well, I wouldn’t wanna say you have a talent for How Not to Get Murdered but I can’t think of any other way to put it.”

Laurie laughs, “Thanks.” And just like that the wall between them is knocked down.

Maybe she did deserve to be less self-critical. She was the same in school, setting the highest possible standard for herself, hinging her worth on academic achievements even though her parents never pressured her, often voicing they were proud as long as she tried her –

Michael is on his way over.

“Quick, he’s coming. Hide!” Laurie whispers to Claudette.

Rather than questioning her, Claudette heeds the instruction – nodding and disappearing around a corner.

Laurie runs straight for him, crossing his line of sight before veering off to pull his attention away from Claudette’s whereabouts. Instead of chasing her, he ignores the bait to break the generator so close to being done. The delay is minor, as long as he doesn’t find Claudette.

Nea must be working on a generator elsewhere, as Dwight is still left hanging. Laurie steps in the hook’s direction, only to stop when she hears a scream. He found Claudette.

Indecisive, Laurie stands in the middle of the cornfield, her head spinning between her two teammates. It would be too predictable to save Dwight, even if he’s now wrestling against the Entity’s starving claws. Michael would only charge straight for her, easily striking them both down just after Dwight is saved.

Quietly clambering for a hiding spot behind a tree, the pulse beats faster and faster until passing her by. Just when Laurie stands up to save Claudette, a generator far behind her is complete – leaving just one left. Meaning Nea won’t be able to get to Dwight in time.

Doubling back, Laurie sprints for the hook, even if it meant running into Michael’s back. If she timed it right, Dwight could at least get away.

Close enough that the heartbeat hammers in her head, she stops to peek around a wood-panel wall, spying Michael leave the enclosed area. Swiftly, she lifts Dwight off the hook and slings his arm over her shoulders, supporting him as he limps to safety.

“Thanks.” He coughs, blood dribbling down his chin and onto his collar. “Thought you’d all abandoned me there.”

“Never,” Laurie promises.

Although the promise rings empty as she hears the pulse pound, Michael inevitably returning to seek them out. Turning to look behind her, she sees him closing in on them, his arm raising – knife glimmering white against the black sky, pointed at Dwight’s back. Laurie pushes Dwight off her, deliberately heaving herself into the blade’s trajectory. It tears through her blouse, slicing into her back, the pain so searing and sharp she can’t hear her own scream or feel her own body hit the ground, just the laceration splitting down her spine.

Crushed by agony, she cannot heave herself up at all, that all too familiar and dreaded force chaining her to the dirt. Crooking her elbows, she braces her hands at her sides, only for her palms to land on something other than the dirt.

Just managing to peer under her arm, she sees herself grasping Michael’s boots.

She squeezes her eyes shut, waiting for him to grab the back of her shirt and haul her over his shoulder but seconds stretch on and he doesn’t move, looming above her while she lies sprawled beneath him, helpless from a weight heavier than gravity. 

Ordinarily, she would consider any moment she doesn’t have to look at Michael a blessing. But now, she hates it, unable to even glean where he’s staring as she blinks at the dry grass. Hearing a rustling ahead, she looks up to see Nea stepping into clear view, trying to bait Michael into a chase.

If Michael moves, it is only to solidify his place, stepping closer around Laurie so his ankles cage her waist.

Gritting her teeth, she uses her grip on him as leverage to twist onto her back, soon regretting the movement and inhaling sharply when her wound rubs against the dry mud.

Flat on her back, she stares up at him from the lowest possible angle, watching him as he watches Nea. The only hint of any cogs wheeling around in his head is his thumb swiping over his knife handle in a repetitive, cycling pattern.

Remembering the mirror shard in her pocket, she lets go of Michael, her absence of touch compelling him to turn his attention down on her. Before she fishes out her own weapon though, she dismisses the idea. Striking him in the arm was enough to let her go – but in the leg? He would only drop to his knees, trapping her even more, possibly crushing a few of her ribs in the fall.

The last generator is done and, still, he is a statue, his legs flanking her like twin marble-cast pillars.

Powerless, she can think of no strategy to escape him, her limbs tied to the floor with a superficial debilitation. Crawling away would be useless – debasing, he would just shuffle after her. It’s not even _Michael_ – it’s this God-forsaken hell and its equally forsaking rules, robbing her of basic autonomy.

Michael’s face blurs, his tilting head melting into smudges of black and white; her anger welling up into tears – she could scream.

But she won’t cry. Not in front of them.

_Use your head. Help them._

If she kept his gaze fixated on her, it would allow the others to escape, even if it meant lying here until she bled out. 

For a few moments she doesn’t need to do anything, just clench her jaw to still her wobbling lip and hold his hollow gaze, until he looks back ahead again – Nea stepping closer, wary -- inching towards a tiger in a cage.

“Don’t bother, Nea!” Laurie grabs Michael’s leg, her grip firm, fingers clawing into the fabric of his trousers.

The buffered touch earns his attention again, his fuming breaths stopping – quieting – then Nea creeps nearer and Laurie has lost him, his knife raising above his head: a warning.

It’s possessive. He’s adamant to not let anyone else near her.

“We’re not leaving you like this!” Nea’s belief is unshakeable.

Already knowing that arguing with Nea is useless. The best Laurie can do is keep distracting Michael. Make him complacent.

Elevating her hold on him, she grabs the same leg with her other hand – just above his knee -- and grimaces, striving to lift herself up against the invisible force. It’s as if she’s trying to swim against a rip tide, grunting and fighting against a supernatural strength more powerful than nature itself. Michael looks back down at her, her efforts winning his curiosity once again as her head barely hovers off the ground – spine curving by an acute angle. Lifting herself by an inch, she spies a crouched figure a few meters away from her feet: Claudette.

It’s then that Laurie realizes. Nea is a decoy.

Although, even as Nea draws nearer, just a few steps away, Michael still centers on Laurie. She doesn’t know if watching her struggle feeds a simple, sadistic fascination or he is waiting to see if she can challenge the Entity’s unseen hand pushing her down, maybe it’s both. Whatever the reason, it’s enough that he is blind to Claudette sneaking towards Laurie behind his back, Nea well within striking distance.

Despite her being on the floor, Michael caging her with a tyrant’s stance, she feels like she has the upper hand – exploiting his fixation for her benefit.

Now, she is closer to him than the earth. Her arm winds around his thigh to secure her hold against gravity, almost slipping from sweat. With her other arm -- she lets go of his leg, cheek pressed against his knee, reaching for higher purchase.

He lowers his arm, his closed fist grazing her shaking fingers.

A dry leaf rustles under Nea’s foot, and chaos ensues.

Michael lunges to fend Nea off, his blade swiping through the air just shy of her neck as she dodges back on her heel. Claudette touches Laurie’s knee and suddenly she is weightless, ducking through Michael’s legs as Claudette grabs her wrists, helping to pull her up to her feet. Even as they run, weaving around wooden walls and trees, Claudette doesn’t let go of Laurie, leading her to the siren call of the escape gates – opened by Dwight.

Nea is close behind them, a barrier between Michael and Laurie before he slashes Nea’s back, forcing her to speed ahead. Stalled for a few seconds, he is too far behind to catch up to Laurie before her, Claudette, Dwight and Nea all rush through the threshold between the farm and the clearing, out of the killing ground and on to safety. 

Claudette turns and grins at Laurie, bright-eyed and exhilarated. Laurie beams back at her, a rush of blood coloring her cheeks red. They did it. They all survived and she slipped right out from under --

Laurie grimaces – pain burning her scalp.

She yelps, wrenched out of Claudette’s hold and dragged back; prey caught by its tail.

Tears prick her eyes at the shock, stumbling back against Michael – she assumes, before she twists around, digging her nails into his fist – locked around a tendril of her hair. It’s impossible for her to see clearly, her hair curtaining her periphery, but she can feel liquid cascade down her arm. Did he rip her hair from the scalp? No -- she cries out as he’s still able to wind the blond wave taut around his hand, tugging her towards him. As he does, she can hear a sickly, fleshy sound, just like when she struggles on a hook.

“Let her go, bastard!” Nea shouts, thumping on Michael’s outstretched arm with her fists. Claudette and Dwight join her efforts, yelling protests and profanities, pushing and clawing at Michael’s arm. Yet he never relents, and just as Laurie thinks she will physically have to tear her skin off to get away from him, she remembers.

Digging into her pocket, she pulls out the small, cloth-bound blade. Its bindings flutter to the ground as she slices the mirror shard up through the stretched rope of her hair.

Freed, she looks up and her mouth hangs open.

Michael is skewered from wrist to shoulder by thin, black bars, criss-crossing over each other like scattered needles; piercing through the ground, up through his flesh, trapping him in the very barricade he tried to break. His blood pours from the mass of impaled wounds, trailing torrents of pure red, yet his hand still remains clenched around the shorn tuft of blond hair, his gaze dead-set on her as it always is.

Despite the blank expression on his face, he somehow looks as if he’s watching her with a bridled rage, his shoulders rising and falling with fast, indignant breaths.

Dwight, Nea and Claudette hurry away from him now that Laurie is no longer in danger.

“Come on, he can’t reach you now,” Claudette assures her, softly tugging at Laurie’s elbow.

Dumbstruck, Laurie blinks, tearing her gaze away from him to face Claudette.

The two women smile weakly at one another, all four survivors ambling back to the campfire, shaken but no less relieved by their fortune.

Underneath their shared, faint laughter of disbelief, Laurie resists the urge to look back over her shoulder.

*

The veteran group greet Meg and Jake in high spirits, Dwight proudly proclaiming they all managed to escape, evoking a stunned ‘holy shit!’ from Meg and impressed ‘well, damn,’ from Jake. Apparently, the mortality rate in trials against Michael always included at least two losses – until now – and Laurie is teased for being something of a good luck token. All they’re missing is cheap wine, beer and a stereo to fully cement the celebratory atmosphere, Dwight orating the story of their survival with a boyish enthusiasm, as if it’s one of those tabletop roleplay games. Nea downplays a few sensationalist elements. Claudette and Laurie laugh, for the most part, affirming a few of the details.

“So he didn’t even hook you? He just… stood there – after downing you?” Meg asks.

“Pretty much,” Laurie returns.

Meg squints, pensive.

Laurie fidgets on her tree-stump perch, an observation at the back of her mind now stepping to the forefront. “I could also see where he was, even without actually seeing him… Is that a thing?”

They all stare at her for a beat. That seems to be happening a lot lately.

“Sometimes when one of us is hooked we can see if the killer is near them but, apart from that, on the list of _things_ we’ve noticed that actually help us… no, it hasn’t come up before,” Dwight offers.

Laurie frowns, thumb pressing into her palm. “I don’t know how much it helped, though. He could see me too.”

Everyone mirrors her expression, brows furrowing with concern and confusion. She can already predict the next trial; not being able to work on a generator near anyone else, nor even run to unhook someone. Just when she got a grip on the rules, another one is added, throwing everything she’s learned into disarray.

“It helped us, still,” Nea says, sitting beside her. “You knew it was him from the start. And it gave us a chance to hide since you saw he was coming.” The fact Nea is saying this feels like it is an objective fact rather than for the sake of placating her.

“I guess that’s one way of looking at it.” Laurie’s frown eases.

“Yeah! I mean, once you get a handle on how it works… ‘with great responsibility’, and all that,” Meg encourages.

“It’s ‘with great power’ first,” Dwight corrects.

Meg rolls her eyes. “Whatever, Dexter. Now gimme the grisly on how you clocked him in the face with a pallet.”

Laurie’s shoulders go lax, content the topic is no longer focused on her, Dwight happy to oblige in describing the chase.

“He favors you,” Nea speaks plainly, only addressing Laurie as the rest of the group listen to Dwight.

Laurie automatically blushes, despite being uncertain of who ‘He’ is, although her suspicion immediately conjures a blank white mask. “What?”

“The killer. You are his…”

Laurie waits for her to continue. So caught up in everyone’s revelry, she remained blissfully ignorant for a precious few minutes, her mind not habitually guessing Michael’s intentions, despite the evidence demanding her to; standing over her like he was staking his claim, refusing to let her go.

His hand – her scar.

“No one was allowed to touch you,” Nea concludes, “you are his.”

Speechless, Laurie struggles to think of a response, her mouth stuttering open and shut. “But I’m not – I got away the first time so he… he…”

“He didn’t hook you.”

“But that doesn’t mean I _belong_ to him.”

“No, it doesn’t. But as long as he thinks you do… you can use that to your advantage.”

“How?”

Nea shrugs. “You’ll find a way. Just like you did earlier.”

For the hundredth time, Laurie is left mystified with more questions than answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would apologise for the lack of Michael in this one but ... this is Laurie centric. And he'll get MUCH more attention in following chapters now Laurie's found her footing somewhat...
> 
> Honourable mention to Xander from BTVS who was major inspo for Dwight. Coincidentally, I very recently watched the episode where JJC plays a Germanic Freddy Krueger... Everything Is Connected in the Great Circle of Horror


	3. His and Hers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In her restless dreams… Laurie sees that town.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, huge thanks for the kudos and comments on the previous chapter!

As far as Haddonfield is concerned, there are three versions of the town taking residence in Laurie’s mind.

First, there is the real Haddonfield. A town in daylight, where children ride their bikes, neighbors wave at each other on their way to work, spouses tend to their flowerbeds and sprinklers are programmed for the predicted rainfall of each season. Where her parents sit at the table for breakfast and dinner – only to break the routine for when Laurie visits on Saturdays, opting for a take-out and movie on the couch.

Second, there is the Not-Haddonfield. A simulacrum of the town under a starless night sky, full of empty houses and empty windows, reconfigured to chart countless chases, where each piece of furniture is a potential obstacle or potential hiding place. The only inhabitants are captive guests, temporal figures no more permanent than the injuries inflicted upon them.

Third, there is the Almost-Haddonfield. A town that exists somewhere between the previous two, unsure of itself. Laurie has only stepped foot in it once, but it is the version she imagines the most; how it impossibly shifts and changes, doors and curtains and bedside tables forming in the blink of an eye, manifesting and evolving from her memory.

Michael intrudes on them all.

Regardless of which Haddonfield she thinks of, she feels his gaze in each one – as encompassing as the sky, she hears his mask-muffled breathing – as if a statue could come to life. No matter how hard she tries to bury him in her conscious, he is a revenant, prying through each door – into every room like a hand sliding out from underneath a closed coffin lid.

His presence in her thoughts only exacerbates the questions surrounding him. She can only hypothesize a few answers: he targets her because she was the one who got away that night – that Halloween originating from a matter of wrong time, wrong place. But beyond that… Why didn’t he just kill her when he had the chance? Is he aware of this Entity holding power over them, too? Does he not kill her because he knows it is a temporary death – therefore, he is not _actually_ taking her life? Does he simply enjoy toying with her – a spectator to her suffering? Was trying to isolate her from her team an effort to break her? If so, why didn’t he pick them off first?

Why is she so obsessed with dissecting his obsession with her?

All these questions eventually kill her, so distracted that she steps right into a trap, too busy thinking about how – unlike Michael – she cannot see the Trapper’s silhouette anywhere across the entire plane of Shelter Woods.

*

Laurie always considered patience one of her virtues but, lately, that virtue is spreading thin.

Only two trials since escaping Michael (for the second – technically third – time) and she is wondering when she can see her home again. Or rather than when, it’s more a work-in-progress plan of _how_. She didn’t want to cause the others any alarm, although she doubts she could indirectly incite an argument like last time, unless it was between her and Dwight. He was the most put out, but eventually he woke up to the fact she’s not exactly an ingenue to escaping murder –

_Wait, am I really structuring my life here based off trials against **him** now? _

Considering she didn’t even have a clock, though, she had to grasp a sense of time from _something_.

Turning to Meg, who sits cross-legged beside the campfire – idly tossing debris into the flames, Laurie asks, “So how many trials has it been exactly… since you got here?”

Meg perches up from her slouched position, her reply delayed as her eyes roam around – thinking. “I lost count somewhere around… thirty-five?”

Laurie’s eyes widen, although once the instinctive shock wears off, she isn’t actually surprised.

“Here, come see something.” Meg stands up, motioning for Laurie to follow.

She does, and the two trudge into the woods, Meg picking up a flashlight from the group’s modest collection of toolboxes and first aid kits.

Their path illuminated, Laurie remains close at Meg’s side, each step amplifying her anticipation.

“ _Hmm_ , I’m sure it was this way. Maybe…” Meg suddenly takes a sharp angle to the left. Laurie has to grab her leader’s shoulder to prevent twisting her ankle on a tree root. “Oops, sorry.”

“It’s fine. Even if I break something, it’ll be fixed by the time I need it to work.”

Meg chuckles – a soundless huff of amusement. “God, I remember spraining my ankle as a kid and I couldn’t run for _weeks_. Here, you could get your leg cut off and the next time you wake up – there it is again! Talk about trippy.”

Laurie’s stomach churns. “ _Have_ you ever got your leg cut off?”

“ _Almost_. I ran the Trapper around for, like, three gens and he fucking lost it. Killed me himself by going all-out machete mode at my thighs. I think I died before anything was amputated but it was…” she clears her throat.

“That sounds…”

“Yeah.”

A silence hangs over their heads, just as heavy as the darkness surrounding them. Laurie glances at a bug sparking through the flashlight’s beam, surprised there’s even a miniscule sign of life here with them. Even the earth they walked on lacked any substantial flora, just dead leaves and fallen branches, all coagulating into mulchy, damp piles they had to step around to avoid slipping.

“So you’re really a retro girl – from the eighties?” Meg asks, easily moving on from the traumatic memory.

“Kinda? More seventies. It was only nineteen-eighty-one before I got here.”

“Man, can you even believe that? Meeting someone from the past. Or the future, for you.”

“I don’t know, all I’d have to do is – y’know – _grow up_ ,” Laurie says, wryly.

“Oh, _ha ha_.” Meg rolls her eyes (Laurie guesses from the brief look, it’s too dim to say for certain). “You know, before you got here I was the ‘oldest’, just by a few years. If we met back home you would be, what… forty-something?”

A strange feeling sinks in Laurie’s stomach. Not dread or embarrassment exactly, but a hybrid of the two. Maybe it’s what that every day, dreary mortality feels like and she’s forgotten. “I can’t even imagine myself in a year, let alone reaching menopause.”

“Neither can I but… We’ll have to all agree on a place to meet up. For when we finally get out of this shit show.” She says it as if it’s an inevitability, as easy as hanging out for coffee on the weekend. “Ah, here it is!” Meg speeds up a little, although Laurie can’t see what stands out in the lit-up distance just yet.

Then Meg stops in front of a large, grey boulder.

Laurie’s brow furrows, confused as to why it’s so remarkable, until she looks closer at the surface of the rock.

“It’s an eye,” she states, matter-of-factly. More specifically, it’s an eye carved into the stone then lined with a black, chalky substance – coal.

“Not _just_ an eye. It’s an eye that’s been here since _I_ got here.”

Laurie’s brow immediately shoots up. “So there could have been… other people here like us, before?”

“Oh, she’s clever.” Megs teeth glimmer in the darkness, grinning. “And check this out.” She points the flashlight down, towards where the rock meets the ground.

Suddenly, in the monotonal din of the forest, there are small bursts of color. Flowers; primroses and sweet William blooming in magenta and coral. Laurie crouches down, but resists touching them – as if they’ll dissolve as soon as she traces her fingertip over a single petal.

“Take one. Keep it in your pocket for the next trial,” Meg suggests.

“Do they help?”

Laurie can hear she rustle of Meg’s jacket as she shrugs. “Dunno. We like to, though, just for the hell of it.”

Assured, Laurie gently plucks the stem of a sweet William from its root, greeted by a peppery fragrance. She remembers her dad trying to cultivate some of these in their backyard but the color was nowhere near as vibrant, this one a sickeningly sweet pink – intensifying into crimson at its center. 

“We better get back. The trial’s probably over by now.” Meg starts for the campfire.

Laurie stands up but hesitates to follow her. “Do you mind if I stay? Just for a little bit.”

“Sure, no prob. You can find your way back to camp, right?”

“Can’t miss it.” She really can’t, the amber glow warming a few trees in the near distance.

But her next path wasn’t set on the campfire, not yet.

“You sure? Don’t need this?” Meg waves the flashlight in her hand.

“Positive. You keep it.”

She could already feel the town at her back, waiting.

“Well, if you’re _that_ confident.” Meg waves. “I’ll catch you on the other side, Laurie.” And she recedes back into the woods.

Laurie stares after Meg until the beam from the flashlight fades.

Turning around, she tucks the stem of the flower into her jean pocket and forays through the forest for Haddonfield.

_Almost_ -Haddonfield, that is.

*

Regardless of whether or not Michael is here, Laurie feels entirely alone.

Nothing has changed in the street. There is no nightly breeze, every picket fence and trimmed shrub is dulled by a uniform blue. The intermittent light from the police car siren is the only sign of motion, save for her, and when she passes its windows she still can’t distinguish a single word of the radio transmission, all cut-up syllables and garbled interference – no vocabulary or language, just red and blue noise.

Looking beyond the vehicle, her gaze lands on the Myers house.

The front door is ajar. Carelessly left open.

She scans the windows, searching for his face, a shadow, any warning that he was in his home. One of the rooms upstairs to the right is lit up but she can’t tell what’s inside from this angle. He must be in there, but then she finds it difficult to imagine him doing anything but stare out through the glass. After all, that was what Doctor Loomis said he did.

She only remembers snippets of what he told her while they were waiting for the police to arrive that night. Shivering and swaddling herself in a blanket, fists clinging on the itchy fabric like a child trying to forget a night terror, barely blinking as she stared into space – barely listening to the doctor musing and muttering beside her. _“Utterly unresponsive, soulless… killed his own sister… staring through the glass, waiting… only waiting…”_ Laurie only came to when she heard the sound of her own name, exclaimed by her mom who quickly assumed the same role as Laurie’s blanket, embracing her daughter with a tearful and terrified hug.

Stepping towards his house, she knows it is a dangerous curiosity, but if she sees he is in there then at least she knows exactly where he is. At least, that’s how she rationalizes her compulsion to approach the front yard – which still bears the sign of her dad’s business; her last name. The patio stairs do not creak under her footsteps and when she glances down at the doormat, she remembers Tommy standing not far behind her, warning that the house was haunted as she ---

Reaching down, she lifts the corner of the mat and finds the key she placed there herself. Again, her own name stares back at her in bright red italic script: _Strode_. It’s affirming enough that she places her hand on the door, peering through the gap as she pushes it open.

Before she can glean any furniture or familial belongings from the darkness, a faint breeze sighs against the nape of her neck, as if trying to persuade her to enter. Instead, she spins back around – finding nothing.

_‘He wears a mask, dummy. You wouldn’t be able to feel his breath,’_ Annie would say. 

_How can I be sure?_

_‘Take my word for it.’_

A trick of the sudden wind or not, the disturbance shakes Laurie enough that she abandons the idea of exploring his home, stuffing the key into her back pocket and pacing back onto the road. There’s now a palpable temperature, cool and ever so slightly humid, the air perspiring.

By nature, she gravitates to her home, beckoned by the thought of her bedroom. Glancing up at her window, she crosses the stree –

He’s there. Staring at her through the glass.

Semi-submerged in darkness, he is a phantom in her house, nothing more than a deathly white, disembodied head – craning down to watch her. Both of them are matched in their motionless stance, fear gripping Laurie by her heels and holding her to the ground. She blinks, expecting him to disappear in the shutter of her eyelids, but Michael remains in her room, his gaze both distant and invasive at the same time.

Her hands clench into fists, anger rising, but she’s too afraid to be blinded by rage, repressing the urge to storm up there. It feels like he wants her to; he’s challenging her to assert that her room – that her house is still hers.

She could stick to her virtues, heed caution and common sense and just walk away. Or she could find a weapon, something to arm herself with before kicking down her own door. Her dad kept his gardening supplies in the garage, maybe…

She leaves Michael’s line of sight and, as luck (or the Entity’s rare generosity) would have it, retrieves a shovel hanging on the wall. Instead of entering through the front door, she strides through the garage entrance and into her living room, not allowing herself to revel in the house now displaying a couch and a television, curtains and a bookcase and her mom’s piano. Laurie is only able to ignore the appearance of these objects as she would do any day at home.

Shovel braced in front of her, ready to swing, she climbs the stairs and closes the door on her immediate right – the bathroom, doing the same for each one she passes down the hall: the closet, her parent’s room, the study, until finally reaching her bedroom.

With the door wide open, she can see no figure standing by the window. Even when she flicks on the light, exposing every shrouded corner, he’s nowhere to be found. She checks behind the door, ignoring her reflection in the full-length mirror – nothing, then kneels down to look under the bed – again, nowhere.

She relaxes her grip on the shovel and lets her gaze roam across her room.

There’s her bed, covered in its crocheted blanket, end tables complete with a lamp and alarm clock (though the hour and minute hands are both immobile, centred on the twelve). Her chest of drawers – her Raggedy Ann doll sat lax upon it, and above the doll – her James Ensor exhibition poster. To her left is her wicker chair, angled in front of her desk which boasts her record player, a few vinyls and a stack of books (the classics, a fairy tale anthology and just a couple of romance novels).

She steps towards her library of literature, wondering if a copy of _Rebecca_ contains any printed word or her notes scrawled in the margin, then stops.

The desk drawer is open.

Looking inside the pulled-out tray, she finds her beauty products: a couple of lipsticks, a bottle of mascara, some nail polish, scrunchies and a curling iron.

She frowns. Her hairbrush is missing.

If she wanted to stay oblivious, she could convince herself it was just a misnomer of the Fog; that some trinkets and keepsakes are bound to be missed. But she knows better, her jaw clenching at the only plausible explanation.

Shovel clattering to the ground, she digs through her room, too furious to value that she had furniture to disrupt. Wrenching back her covers in case of a missing pillow, yanking all her drawers open, rummaging through each article of folded clothing – underwear, even. In her frenzy, her shoulder accidentally nudges a framed photo on a shelf and it clatters to the ground.

Picking it up, she exhales a held breath, thankful that the glass façade didn’t smash nor even crack from the fall. The photo gives her pause, Annie and Lynda’s beaming faces coaxing Laurie from her paranoia. She remembers the moment, taken only a few months before they died – at Haddonfield’s fundraising rally for the hospital. Carefully, she sets the picture back on the shelf but before she lets go of it, she notices a mark on the glass in the lower left corner.

Inspecting it closer, she tilts the frame under the light, able to spot the fine, circling lines of a fingerprint.

Testing her suspicion, she presses her thumb over the mark, finding the circumference of the print is bigger than her own.

Her anger is fleeting, quickly replaced by the numbing reality; he had already taken them from her, leaving his skin’s signature on their photo is an insult, at most, but unlike a scar, she can easily wipe the mark away and place the picture back on the shelf.

Turning around, she observes the domestic disarray, her bedding and clothes strewn over the floor, drawers spilling out of their wooden frames, books and records scattered over her desk. She used to pride herself on her organization, a home-hewn neatness that assured her everything was in its rightful place.

But now, she chokes on a dry sob; relieved to have anything at all.

Yet she knows she can’t stay to clean up, she’d already been here long enough to warrant suspicion from Meg – maybe the others, too, if their trial was over. 

Clamping her hand over her mouth, she breathes a steadying lungful of air, quelling her tears, then picks up the shovel. As she leaves, she habitually closes the door behind her. All the other rooms are still shut as she rushes down the hall, her speed swift in case he bursts out to strike her.

Descending the stairs and running out onto the street, she doesn’t notice the single sweet William escape from her pocket and flutter to the ground.

Part of her dreads returning to camp, irritation spiking at having to keep her own home a secret. Not even Michael forbade her from Haddonfield – even as she speeds past his house, glancing at the second-storey window. Still, he’s not there… or she just can’t see him.

She would have to cut her losses with the hairbrush.

Wary, she scans the neighborhood as she sprints for the gates, on alert in case he suddenly lunged from the bushes to attack her… or _not_ attack her. Maybe he respected she had a place here, or the Entity had issued some kind of restraining order.

Passing through the gate, the shovel in her hands disintegrates into cinders and dust and, for once, something ordinarily inexplicable makes sense. Everything returns to its rightful place.

She disappears into the forest and, as her steps lead her to the fire, Laurie allows herself to look back over her shoulder.

Michael stands at the edge of Haddonfield, watching her leave.

Despite the certainty that he can’t follow her any further, she rushes away from him through the darkness.

Crumpled crimson petals fall from Michael’s unfolding fist, plummeting to the ground with the same weight as dead flies swept off a windowsill.

*

When Laurie reunites with the group, her disappearance goes unnoticed – everyone distracted by the arrival of a new victim.

He thinks this is all a ‘bad trip’ but he doesn’t need to be talked down or placated. He just sits down, removes his sunglasses to run his hands down his face, then warns that if anyone tries to steal his stuff while he’s passed out, he’ll know. Not that there’s much of anything to steal.

Once he discovers that there is no passing out here, which doesn’t take long, everyone introduces themselves and gives him a guide not so different to the one Laurie received. Although, she suspects Dwight’s question is a new feature, asking the man, Ace, if he happens to know any serial killers or had a passing encounter with a ‘humanoid cryptid’. Ace gives him a look as if to say, ‘what the hell are you talking about.’

“So he wasn’t in the trial?” Laurie asks Claudette.

“No. We thought after you, that would be the new routine but…” Claudette shrugs.

Claudette has a habit of classifying her own suspicions and thought processes as a collective ‘we’, despite nobody else noticing the discrepancy in the Entity’s methods of induction, at least not around Laurie. 

“And the killer?”

Claudette rolls her eyes, her shoulders falling with a prolonged sigh, but before she can answer, Jake cuts in.

“Forget wearing any pants. You. Will. Shit. Yourself.”

Laurie can’t help but smirk, amused that even Jake was shaken. “That bad, huh? Your pants have my heartfelt sympathies.”

Jake shakes his head. “They’re gonna need something stronger than that.”

*

They all warn her about the symbols in the ground, telling Laurie not to set her foot down anywhere near them, but in the thick, slip-slide of the mud, it’s impossible to tell the difference. Especially when she has no control, losing her footing and falling on her back, her face, her ass, until she looks like she’s risen from the depths of a bog, caked in sludge and thin animal bones and wet blood.

She’s not sure which is worse, this new realm or the killer’s jack-in-the-box ability, bursting out of nowhere and reducing the soundscape of the swamp to a screeching litany of curses, Laurie’s banshee cries and Meg’s screams of ‘bitch-faced bitch!’ and ‘fuck you, hag!’ being the most common culprits. Laurie tries to be wary of any traps around generators and hooks, sometimes avoiding them all together until Nea finds her – mud only covering her shins and arms -- informing Laurie to, ‘Just crouch down’.

They can’t help the new guy much because they never run – or sneak – into him.

“Probably in a locker. Coward,” Nea judges, a sour look on her face as she and Laurie mend their first generator. The three women have already been hooked once.

“Can you blame him?” Laurie empathizes.

Nea doesn’t take the debate any further, just sighing.

Inevitably, Laurie, Nea and Meg return to camp after being swallowed by the sky. Automatically clean of any dirt and grime.

Not long after, Ace returns and grins at everyone, smug and agitating, then drops two first aid kits and a flashlight at his demised team’s feet. “Your sacrifice wasn’t in vain, ladies. No hard feelings?”

Before they can answer, he walks away, the three staring after him with varying expressions of bewilderment and annoyance.

“Still a coward,” Nea mutters, picking up a first aid kit.

Later, Laurie finds out that Ace was abducted in 1984, making her feel like she isn’t the only one out of the post-modern loop. Although, she’s sceptical at some of the tales he tells when she asks what he did before the Fog, painting himself as a regular Robin Hood. He’s charismatic, clearly a liar, but the flaw doesn’t bother her as it may have done if they met in real life. His moral compass may have been a little off north, but it wasn’t shattered.

*

Before the novelty and terror of a new teammate and killer can even wear off, Michael breaks into Laurie’s train of thought and refuses to leave.

Sometimes, she tries to actively push him back out, distracting herself with talk around the campfire. Conversation with Meg and Claudette flows naturally, each of them equally curious about each other’s lives before. Sometimes they can talk for what feels like hours, as if they’re all back in college – living in the same hall as each other and chatting into the early hours of the morning; reminiscing over school and ex-crushes and lost friends, laughing for no reason, bridging the dissonance between their generational gap, crying for reasons that don’t need to be voiced – already understood. Nea joins them too, when she’s inclined, but Laurie is reticent in asking too many questions about her life on the streets – not wanting to come off as insensitive and alienating.

They unintentionally establish a ‘girls club’, not that they make any effort to exclude the boys. Dwight often disregards his life before as ‘boring, dull and generally embarrassing’, even when they try to goad him into joining their coven. He prefers talking about _things_ , describing movies and video games in detail. Laurie can’t offer much in terms of a response but most of the time she’s happy enough to just listen, figuring this must be the same process her mom went through when her daughter asked for advice on an essay analyzing a Bronte novel, a Maya Angelou poem, a Joan Didion article. Jake is receptive but prefers talking one-on-one. And Ace is… they humor him enough that they’re all ‘kid’ to him. 

However, regardless of who Laurie is sat beside, her undivided attention eventually strays. She’s learned to excuse herself, rather than disrespect anyone with the pretense she is listening. No one really questions why she needs time alone anymore, recognizing the need for solitude.

Whenever she retreats to the woods, her mind feels unchecked – rampant. Staring into darkness, she replays moments in sequence; his hand – her scar, caged beneath him – cutting herself out of his grip, watching her from her own window – letting her leave without any effort to harm or ensnare her.

She’s just beginning to feel she’s opened a book, only to find it’s full of blank pages. 

_“You are his…”_ Nea’s blunt allusion echoes in Laurie’s mind, unsatisfactory in its incompletion. ‘Obsession’ is clear enough, but in that there was a _concession_ – she is exempt from certain rules that her friends have no choice but to adhere to… or he bends certain rules to keep her extricated from them. But that’s as far as she reaches before she mentally hits a cold stone wall, unable to find a door with the reasons _why_.

_‘God, Laurie, can’t you just leave a mystery alone?’_ Annie teases.

She reaches in her back pocket, exhuming the key to the Myers house.

_‘Throw it. Bury it. Forget it.’_

In spite of Annie’s guidance, the key remains in Laurie’s palm, the metal warm – its teeth sharp and pristine from being unused. Attached to her name.

Her fist closes around it but before she can tuck the key back into her pocket, she blinks and her eyes open to an all-too familiar street.

*

It only takes a matter of seconds before an agonized screech tears through the neighborhood.

Trials with the Nurse are always short-lived, her method of hunting each victim like cutting and cauterizing an infected limb. Laurie is the first to fall. Despite knowing this condensed Not-Haddonfield like a blueprint etched into her palm, she makes mistakes, especially when fixing the generator in the Myers house; wondering if the room layout and architecture is true to its original counterpart, distracted by the possible placement of family photos by the stairs, fabricating a concrete image of his home.

She becomes predictable, always meandering back to the same patio after she’s unhooked, always greeted by the same grinning pumpkin. Even Meg gives her a look as if to say ‘come on’ after rescuing her for the second time but Laurie ignores the sting of disapproval. She gets the generator done, at least, but only just before she’s recaptured and floats towards her premature death.

Dissolving into nothing, her last thought is if it was all unwitting self-sabotage.

Then she’s in the woods, staring at the glowing fire through the trees. She takes a step –

And stops, an insidious idea coiling in her mind like a crooked, beckoning finger.

No one at camp knew she died, for all they knew she could still be in the trial, she didn’t need to reunite with them just yet.

Haddonfield is always waiting to welcome her back.

The trip there feels shorter, arguably at an equal distance to the camp. As she passes through the perpetually open gates, she can actually feel the air brushing against her face, chilly yet replenishing – the kind of breeze that travels just before the sun rises or just after the sun sets. It follows her as she walks down the lane, blanketing her shoulders with a corporeal and compelling grasp.

She sets a path for her home but falters, glancing at the Myers house.

Just like last time, the one room upstairs is the only one lit, and the front door is ajar.

The breeze at her back feels coercive, almost as if it could whisper into her ear. She yields to it, edging towards the front yard. The sign of her name is left unnoticed, this time, as she slowly ascends the steps and finds herself on the porch.

Reaching for the door, she hesitates, her hand recoiling – the rational side of fear pulling her back. He could be inside – and what then? _Could_ she die here if he tried to kill her? Would he even be given the chance to try? 

Her heartbeat – loud and true and _hers_ – pounds in her ears as she plants her hand on the door, only needing to nudge it so it opens wide.

Blue light shivers through the entrance, and she can see the flat shape of walls concealed by the dark. She waits for a creak, a shifting shadow, but all she hears is the sound of her own breath, coalescing with the silence. Quickly, her arm shoots out beside her – hand colliding with the wall in search of a light switch. She finds it, and the room brightens into a narrow hallway, leading to a flight of stairs.

Leaving the porch, she steps into his home.

Soundless and careful, she treads through the hallway, her gaze glued to the top of the stairs until she passes an archway to her right, revealing a living room. It looks just like any typical lounge, the furniture somewhat dated and much more lacey, side tables covered in doilies and potted flowers, the television shrouded by a dust cover, as if every sharp-angled corner and hard surface had to be softened. She can’t see beyond the far end of the couch, however, the light from the hallway only illuminating so much, but it’s the coffee table that steals her attention.

From this distance, she can’t exactly identify the tabletop clutter; what seems to be a page or pamphlet, some cards and a shapeless ornament. Heeding her curiosity, Laurie treads inside the living room to inspect the unknown items.

First, she squints at the ornament, but it’s as notable as any rock found in a garden. It has a meaning she can’t recognize but before she can guess its significance, she is distracted by a picture of a smiling girl in the middle of a flyer. Laurie picks up the page – it glimmers, surrounded by an ornate border, the text underneath reading:

In Loving Memory

Judith Myers

July 5th 1945 – October 31st 1963

Laurie had heard her name even before Michael returned to Haddonfield. Judith Myers’ death was gravely recalled by the town’s residents, the murder an oft-buried topic; a problem as easily dismissed as dousing bug-bitten hydrangeas in pesticide. But the Myers house couldn’t be ignored, never rebought or reclaimed after the family left, a testament to the enduring horror of the six-year-old boy who murdered his own sister.

Laurie stares at the picture of Judith, wondering what kind of life she led before it was taken away from her. It couldn’t have been so different from Annie and Lynda’s; safe in their town-size bubble of school and family, briefly escaping for weekend trips, maybe striving for independence. Laurie always found the reliable stability of Haddonfield a comfort, but that may have been because the idea of leaving it was so daunting.

Another glimmer in her periphery breaks her line of thought. Setting the memorial page back down, she reaches for a card – no, a black and white photo – the glossy sheen eclipsing two figures before she tilts it away from the stark light. Judith is smiling again but not at her, instead grinning at a boy she’s carrying in her arms and pointing ahead, as if encouraging him to smile for the camera, too. His mouth is quirked slightly, staring back at Judith all the same.

It’s surreal, having to acknowledge he was a child just like anyone else.

Glancing back at the table, her gaze lands on a second photo; the same siblings posed in front of their house, this time looking at Laurie. Judith still beams, beautiful in that lost and untouchable way like classic Hollywood stars, whereas Michael wears no expression at all, his child’s stare as impassive as the camera lens itself.

His face suddenly darkens, overcast by a shadow, and Laurie looks up.

As if seeing him in the photo summoned him, Michael stands in the doorway, his broad frame haloed by the light behind him.

Laurie freezes, panic gripping her. “I – _uh_ …” she stammers, almost apologizing. Tentatively and respectfully – as if handling a photo made of glass, she places the picture back on the table.

His head follows the movement.

Time drags into slow, agonizing seconds as none of them move.

Then Laurie bolts through the living room, turning into a kitchen and reaching for the first door she finds. Luckily, it’s not locked, and she bursts through, quickly sprinting through his garden and out onto the road, heading for the gates.

Glancing behind her, she sees him in the middle of the street – but he’s not moving.

His white face yellowed from the streetlight, he just stands with his inhuman stillness.

Maybe the Entity is stopping him, enforcing him to remain distant. Or maybe it’s his own volition; he knows it’s useless to chase her because of the boundaries the Entity has set. Yet he isn’t breathing with that same contained anger she saw the last time she escaped him.

His stance is patient – arrogant – while he watches her run away.

He knows it won’t be long before she returns.

*

Emerging from the woods and into the light of the campfire, Laurie braces herself for any potential consequences of her disappearance. But some of the group – Meg, Cluadette and Jake – only glance at her and smile, unfazed, the others invested in a game of cards.

“Needed a break?” Claudette asks, sympathetic.

“Yeah…” Laurie half-lies, withholding _where_ exactly.

Nea, with her keen sense, looks up at Laurie from the cards in her hand, and Laurie suspects she knows.

The truth is in her throat, begging to be said. Claudette always has that effect, caring about everyone so casually that she inspires honesty. _She would understand_.

But what if she doesn’t?

What if Laurie tells her and everyone forms a coup to prevent Laurie from going home again, stage an intervention or insist on going with her – risking their own safety.

“It’s understandable. Dying can _really_ suck, sometimes,” Claudette says.

Laurie latches onto the lie, avoiding Claudette’s eyes as she sits down next to her. “I was just… I don’t know, I couldn’t focus for the whole trial.” Lying is easier than she thought, at least when she doesn’t look at who she’s lying to.

“Meg mentioned that… I don’t blame you, though. I’d be freaked out too if I had to play Murder House in my own home.”

_She understands._

And yet, all Laurie responds with is, “Yeah… it can really suck.”

Not much later, Laurie almost asks Jake if he’s ever been attacked while scavenging for toolboxes in the killers’ realm, then she represses the curiosity, afraid it will raise suspicion. Even if the extent of the Entity’s power is a question relentlessly orbiting around her mind, especially how much power is held over Michael.

*

Occasionally, she visits the bed of flowers – overseen by the eye carved into the rock. It’s a symbol that demands to be translated. Dwight mentioned something about ‘The Illuminati’ – whatever that is – but his dry delivery suggested he was atheistic about the conspiracy. Nea harkened back to a design she spray-painted on the wall of a cemetery groundskeeper’s shed, an ‘all-seeing eye’, and maybe that’s all it is, tangible proof of the Entity’s omniscience.

Laurie doesn’t ponder over it for long, however, too concerned with resisting the call of her hometown each time she ventures into the forest. Yet each time she imagines walking through the gate, it is not an empty street that greets her, but a lone figure standing in the middle of it; waiting.

*

“What the hell is he _doing_?” Jake winces as Laurie picks him up off the ground for the third time. She can’t linger to bandage the lacerations on his back, let alone calm his frustration, the silhouette of the ‘he’ in question stalking towards them.

Not a single generator has been fixed, nor has anyone been hooked. Yet Laurie is being run off her feet, ping-ponging across the gas station yard, pulling Nea, Jake and Ace to stand – barely able to catch her breath before they have to flee from each other’s sides. The area of towering, rusted vehicles has become an amphitheatre for her dedication, where she is forced to play along with an endless game of divide and conquer in which her teammates are nothing more than incapacitated bait, luring her into the audience - Michael’s - view.

She has attempted to hide from his searching gaze, slipping behind a groaning car wreckage or a tree, and when he doesn’t find her he abandons the hunt to find someone else – at one point leaving her as the sole victim left standing. She would like to think she’s finally learned how to evade him but she’s not so naïve. He’s letting her get away, choosing to watch her whenever he can rather than strike.

And it’s somehow worse, as if she’s knowingly but powerlessly complicit in her friends’ suffering.

So she has no choice but to help them, aware that she is simultaneously helping Michael as soon as she fulfils his expectations; trying to save everyone else before saving herself.

After running from Jake’s side, she courses a route to Ace – who has crawled towards Nea, making Laurie’s job easier.

“The guy just won’t quit, huh?” Ace remarks as Laurie wrangles him up on his feet. She shoots him a humorless look.

The two hurry towards Nea, supporting her as she rises off the floor, but even when two of them are cleaning the blood off her back, they’re not quick enough to aid in numbing the full severity of her pain before Michael is striding towards the group, splitting them all into different directions.

Her calves burning, Laurie looks behind her, expecting Michael to stare after her trail. Instead, he curves his path to chase Ace.

The knife, once dormant by his side, raises above his head – perfectly angled at its target limping away. She waits for the blade to cut through the air and into Ace yet again, but it is Michael’s empty hand that is the first perpetrator, grabbing Ace by his shoulder and –

Her heart lurches into her throat.

_No. That’s… he can’t._

Michael plunges the knife through its victim’s back, the blade’s point piercing through muscle and organs. Ace is wordless – voiceless – no cry escaping him as he slumps to the ground, blood and blade slipping from the deadening weight of his body.

The murder is cold and efficient, no more than a necessary means to an end. 

_But how could he… without ---_

Laurie cuts herself off, re-focusing on a much more immediate problem of getting away.

Rushing towards the shack, she finds Jake again, who looks just as dumb-struck as she felt. However, she resists the urge to find a semblance of comfort in company, knowing she will only alert Michael to her team’s whereabouts. The pulse beats at the back of her head as she keeps sprinting, changing her route at the glimpse of Nea crouched next to a pallet.

Every generator remains silent as she passes them by. Attempting to gain any advantage seems futile now; their deaths imminent regardless of trying for effort’s sake. Still, she runs, vaulting over windows and half-walls, her pounding steps never slowing, never relenting, even as pain cracks through her thighs and feet, even as she has to leap over Ace’s lifeless body.

But she can’t run forever, nor can she keep Michael on her tail, the heartbeat eventually quieting and straying away from her. 

She takes the moment of reprieve, stopping to gasp for breath, wiping sweat from her brow as she clutches her stomach and leans against a car crushed down to half its size.

Even when he doesn’t even touch her, Michael is suffocating.

Worst of all, she can’t find any way to counter this – to survive him. She had conceded to dying by any other killer’s hand when there was no option, tolerating her fate with a clinical resignation. Against Michael, however, Laurie clings onto a steadfast determination, as if it’s her right and responsibility to live so she can protect her friends from him.

And she had already failed them – twice now. Her breath stolen from her yet again at the knowledge of Jake’s death; silently tolling through the yard.

Only two left.

She steels herself, inhaling and exhaling and concentrating on counting each second. Nea is still alive, and it’s enough to stop Laurie from collapsing into a hopeless, sobbing heap. Determined, her stare searches for Michael’s figure in the mist.

As soon as she finds him, she doesn’t run away but runs straight for him, bridging the distance in a few fast footsteps.

At first, he appears as nothing more than a shadow, just a few feet away, and then he becomes whole; his white face and hands discernible against his suit.

Closer, he charges towards her, and she clenches her fists, planting her feet firmly in the ground. She’s tempted to close her eyes, to blind herself from his inevitable bruising grip as his boots thump over the soil – louder, barely an inch between them as she grits her teeth and tilts her chin up to look directly at his face.

He strides past her, and as her shoulder brushes his elbow, he only spares her a look before his stare turns back ahead of him.

Left with nothing but a ghosting breeze, she doesn’t have a chance to be confused, frustration boiling her blood. 

“But I’m… I’m right here!” she shouts, sprinting after him.

He ignores her, scouring around the trees and hill with his gaze, unable to find what he seeks, moving on for the gas station.

Behind him, Laurie reaches out and grabs at the back of his coveralls.

But she can’t even pull him off-balance, her fist white-knuckled around the deep blue fabric, her tugging only forcing her to stumble into his back as he marches on. Twisting her grip to cinch tighter, she reaches higher, grasping his collar and wrenching at it, digging her heels into the dirt and leaning her entire weight backwards. Again, she can’t break him from his crusade. He is just as blind in his ambition as her, stamping through the convenience store, no slower despite the woman clambering at him and warring with him in a desperate attempt at sabotage.

Then Laurie spies the slit in the back of his silicone neck.

Plunging her fingers through it, she claws into his flesh, and at that, he finally spins around.

His grasp is just as swift as hers, his fist locking around her throat as hers strangles his wrist. Glaring up at him, any fear in her dead-set stare is non-existent – challenging. She already knows he isn’t choking her, his hold only secure enough to be a warning.

A warning of what? He’s going to kill her anyhow.

Right?

Remembering how he just let her leave Haddonfield, uncertainty clouds her self-assurance, and she glares at the empty chasms of his gaze, tugging at his wrist.

“What are you waiting for?” she asks, her voice clear and steadfast despite the constriction around her throat.

“Hey, dumskalle!” a voice taunts over his shoulder.

Immediately, Michael lets Laurie go at the intrusion and leaves her, striding towards Nea.

“No…” Laurie reaches for his elbow, her fingers grasping thin air. “Nea, no!”

She runs – knowing it’s useless, tearing her nails into his back and shoulders – knowing it won’t stop him. Only when she hears a strangled cry – Nea eclipsed from view by the bulk of Michael’s figure, does Laurie let go, squeezing her eyes shut and covering her ears.

She can’t save any of them.

It doesn’t matter that her team’s deaths are momentary. Unlike Annie and Lynda and Bob, they will never get a funeral. Her friends will return to the pyre of the campfire, and keep on returning there time and time again, as if each of them are effigies, built and rebuilt just to be destroyed.

If she can’t protect at least one of them from Michael then what is she here for?

What was the point in fighting him when all she’s left with is fear -- weak with it; cowering and clutching at herself, refusing to open her eyes and taking the darkness for all that it’s worth. Anything but the sight of her dead friends. Anything but him. 

Something grazes the back of her hand, followed by a warmth trickling down her arm. She flinches away from the touch, squeaking in protest, but the touch asserts itself into an unshakeable grip – pulling her hand away from her face by her wrist.

Forced to listen, all she can hear is his breathing, humid and suppressed. He’s content to kill the others and be done with them, as mindlessly practical as any butcher with their nameless carcass, but Laurie knows that she’s tethered to Michael by bindings she can’t break – let alone understand; as if by yanking at her arms he’s ensuring that bond can’t ever be cut, demanding her to see him – to decipher his silence.

With both of her wrists shackled, it dawns on Laurie that he dropped his knife.

Hers will be a slow death. She’s sure of it.

And so she fights against him, thrashing away from his arms and chest in an effort to own her own hands again, refusing to meet his hollow gaze. Every cry of protest is matched with his omnipotent strength, her hair flaying around her head as if it, too, is striving for escape.

Struggling, she knows she will die, and yet she still tries to wrestle herself out of his possession, kicking at his shins and pulling back with all her meaningless weight. It would be so easy to let her legs go lax, to surrender to the shackles and noose, passive and pliant and screaming until her voice is choked out of her.

It would be quicker to just give in. Fighting him is always so _exhausting_ , she’s sick with her own weakness, tired of her vulnerability that costs her friends their lives.

Relinquishing all of her defenses, her limbs going slack, succumbing to submission. But her eyes are still locked shut. 

Yet before she can sink to the ground, Michael trades his grip on her left wrist for the back of her head – yanking on a fistful of her hair, forcing her to wince and stare up at him.

His gaze tears her open like he’s trying to see inside her.

Scalp stinging, her eyes glisten with unfallen tears, trapped with no choice but to stare at her would-be killer’s face when he finally strangles her.

For a while, all that moves is their heaving chests, equally short of breath from the fight.

Then, his grasp around her wrist loosens, and she swallows. With her neck bared, she feels like a sleep-walking victim in a vampire novel but it’s her face Michael is focused on, recording each micro-expression; the twitch of her pressed lips, the strands of blond hair stuck to her temples, her green eyes – always staring back at him – exhausted but alive with hate and horror and buried rage.

Still, no pressure even skirts across her neck.

Laurie frowns, feeling the fist affixed to her right arm – his grasp that she expected to choke her – to, instead, shove her hand into his chest. She winces, her fingers crushed against his torso, her knuckles cracking from his brute force.

Grimacing, her hand shudders open and, laying her palm flat, she feels the echo of his heartbeat. Frantic and fierce, a sensation so unnatural in the same body that wears such a catatonic face. Bewildered, Laurie tries to glance down at the gesture but the angle he’s contorted her in blocks the gesture from view.

Automatically, Michael softens his grasp on her hair, allowing her to crane her head down and look at her bloodied hand – splayed open like a bird’s wing over his sternum, just above his abdomen.

He holds her within his grip and gaze, staring at her as if he’s waiting for a response.

Fear mutates into curiosity.

“I - I don’t know what…”

Her question is cut off when he pulls her hand up from his chest, bringing it to hover just above his shoulder. Laurie’s neck instinctively burns, her fingers shying away from touching him where he tries to lead her. But he is impatient and insistent, giving Laurie no choice but to press her fingertips against his plastic neck.

It’s surprisingly warm, just the same as real skin, but what makes her eyes widen is the cavity she can feel.

The incision left by her knitting needle.

She scarred him, too.

At the same time, his fingers slip from the tendrils of her hair, creeping over her left shoulder, gravitating to her arm and searching through her torn sleeve – only stopping to rest over the mark he carved.

They are both survivors of each other.

Her lips fall open at the silent revelation. She no longer stares up at him in oblivious confusion and naivete – in their place, she feels a surge of satisfaction, no – something more potent and intoxicating, a new and alien sense she’d forgotten after entering the Fog – before that, even.

Power.

She has yet to turn her face to him directly – canted slightly away to the right, residual trepidation coiling in her gut despite his hold on her being more akin to a cage of affection than anything else. His thumb stroking her scar just the same as before, his grasp tying her to him, his black and heavy gaze subsuming her.

If looks could kill… if looks could _want_.

Blood rushing through her ears, she hesitates from curling her fingers underneath the hem of his mask and pulling it off. She’d never seen his hidden face, immediately hiding her own after exposing him that night. Part of her feels like she wouldn’t be able to, anyway, as if the silicone is sewn into his flesh, inseparable.

Emboldened, she turns her face to scrutinize him until they are as parallel to each other as a reflection in a mirror. Now, it feels as if there is a semblance of understanding – or, at least, a cracked resemblance of it.

_But that doesn’t mean I belong to him._

_‘No, it doesn’t. But as long as he thinks you do… you can use that to your advantage.’_

Tentatively, Laurie tries to steady her trembling fingers as they shiver over his neck, digging firmly into the sloping column of pallid plastic so he can feel the imprint of a caress.

His breath hitches in his throat, and he pulls her closer, their chests colliding. 

Again, she feels that alien intoxication. _She_ evoked that response, _she_ could influence his actions with reciprocal touch alone.

“You’re… not going to kill me.” There is nothing uncertain in her tone, it is a statement – an observation.

As voiceless as the dead, he offers no answer, and she never expects him to.

He does, however, suddenly break the embrace, turning around with her wrist in grasp. She walks after him in tow; a doll dragged around by a child, as if possessing something – someone – could be careless and gentle and innocent.

She looks at Nea’s body, guilty as she has to step over her, mentally vowing that next time her friends will survive. But Laurie barely has a second to wallow in her failure, trying to keep up with Michael’s pace.

He is purposeful, marching around the car wreckages and steel debris, footsteps beating against the floor of the shack and all the way back to the store, all the while ensuring she is bound to him. Until they both hear the familiar hymn permeating from a hidden nook.

Stopping at the hatch, black smoke spills out over their ankles.

He turns to her, and she is no longer immediately struck by terror.

Although, it all feels too good to be true. She could take one step into her freedom and he could pull her back. Michael’s grip on her wrist is still inescapable, softening then reflexively tightening like an indecisive pulse, warring over whether to let her go or not.

“Haddonfield,” she says. A promise – an invocation.

Michael releases her, his hand slipping from her wrist, leaving a band of blood like a clumsily tied red ribbon. 

Laurie casts him one more look over her shoulder then jumps into her granted escape.

*

Before she wakes, she feels light over the back of her eyelids and knows not to expect the encroaching darkness of the woods.

And, sure enough, her eyes open to the street-lit sight of her hometown; split by the single road and shrouded by a flimsy curtain of mist, briefly tricking her into believing the lane could stretch on forever.

This world without a horizon.

She stands at the edge of the gates, in the veil between two thresholds.

Turning to look behind her, there is the far-distant light of the campfire. No more iridescent than a single firefly, flickering in then out of her consciousness.

She turns back to Haddonfield and gasps, immediately silencing herself with her palm.

Michael stands in front of her, entirely illuminated.

Behind the forbidding barricade, he is a captive here, just as she is. Her hand falls away from her face and, opposite each other, both of them stand resolute and patient, voyeurs to each other’s imprisonment. Yet they are as much the Entity’s prisoners as they are one another’s.

His abyssal stare is still just as penetrative, but there is a vacancy in the ever-gazing absence, a mute invitation.

_Waiting. Only waiting. Always waiting._

Laurie rises above her fear. Inhaling a lungful of air, her breathing settles into perfect tandem with his own.

The barrier disintegrates as she steps through to the other side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize my portrayal of Michael is… tame? I guess? In comparison to others I’ve read… but Britney told me to choose my own destiny and that destiny is milking his voyeuristic and obsessive tendencies for all they’re worth… and with Laurie they’re worth a lot…


	4. Sensuum Defectui

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laurie and co. are presented with a festive complication in trials.
> 
> And Michael gets jealous easily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Christ, it's been A Minute. Typical writer excuses, Christmas, Life, second-guessing every other sentence thanks to SAD... but chapter 4 is here! As the summary hints, there's some elements of the festive season that happened to line up with that in game... hopefully it's not too late... 
> 
> Again, thank you x10000 for the kudos and comments. While I don't reply to every one, it's hugely appreciated and helps remind me that there are people out there who really read this!
> 
> EDIT: Didn't realise how wack the line spacing was until I posted, hopefully I fixed it before anyone saw!

It took two weeks after Annie and Lynda died for Laurie to finally accept they were gone.

She had adamantly insisted on going to school as soon as possible, assuring her parents it would be easier to follow an imposed routine, repeatedly convincing them that it wasn’t just a distraction. It was something normal and familiar and _not_ a desperate attempt to prove how well-adjusted she could be. Her grades didn’t suffer, she volunteered to sell tickets for the middle school dance, she wore concealer to cover the dark circles under her eyes. Though she was often tested by her more tactless classmates ( _Yes, it was_ _horrifying_ _. Yes, I was scared. Yes, I miss them_ _)_ _,_ she was the same as before.

Then, on one afternoon when walking home, she got an idle thought in her head to ask Annie and Lynda when they wanted to check out the new drive-in theater. It must have only been a second, one in which she forgot that night ever happened – that they were...

And she was sobbing in the street. Finally accepting that every time they walked down Lampkin Lane together was and only ever would be a memory.

And now, she is walking down the same street. With the man who killed them right behind her.

Although walking is an overstatement. Her steps are timid and unsure, more frequently is she glancing over her shoulder, suspecting he will suddenly perform one of his disappearing acts. But no, each time he proves her suspicion wrong, his void gaze always there to greet her, his head tilted down to make it inescapably obvious that gaze is fixated on her. For once, she’s thankful that she knows exactly where he is, even if he’s close to breathing down her neck – her skin prickling each time he exhales (she can’t feel it, but the sound alone is enough).

Muscle memory almost leads her to her house but there’s a part of her still vying for what little privacy she can keep to herself, despite knowing he had already let himself in before.

But as far as she can recall, he didn’t exactly chase her out of _his_ home.

She stops, and he bumps into her back. Again, she twists around to look at him, having to crane her neck up to see his face at such an oppressive proximity. The light from the silent police siren casts him in rotating glimmers of red and blue, each color at its most vivid on the white canvas of his mask. It’s disorienting. She reminds herself to turn away.

Approaching the Myers house, she feels no move on his part to pull her away, if anything the opposite – his constant place at her back almost a speechless encouragement. Even though she’s decided where she’s going, the prospect doesn’t make her footsteps any less hesitant. Here in the Fog, she is learning that she’s entirely capable of losing all sense while habitually clinging onto a semblance of caution – as if it even matters at this point.

Standing so close between Michael and his house, it’s like reaching right into the gaping maw of a tiger, knowing how sharp each tooth is... yet it doesn’t bite. Walking across the patio and reaching for the front door, the propinquity between danger and safety feels razor-thin. She doesn’t realize how warm she is until a sweeping breeze cools her face and arms, eliciting a shiver as she clasps the door handle.

Caution stills her again, fingers freezing up. She can feel the subtle pressure of his chest against her shoulders each time he inhales – a living, breathing shadow replacing her own.

Sense would dictate that she should feel trapped, and if she is, she’s walking into a cage of her own making.

But she chose this.

Suddenly, he leans forward and she jumps, looking over her side to see his arm stretch past her. She almost lets go of the handle but his palm encases her knuckles, his fist wrapping around hers. Heat thrums through her fingers, as if his grasp makes her pulse all the more palpable.

They turn the handle and push the door open.

His touch lingers on her, firm yet pliant; when her fingers unfurl and drift back through the air, his do too. She doesn’t have to look at him to know he is watching the shape of their hands together but his open touch remains unreciprocated, her palm never meeting his own.

Her own attention is focused on the house. The hallway is dark but before she can flick the switch on, he brushes past her and into the shrouded entrance, his figure disappearing from view but the sound of his footfall signalling that he was still walking – ahead and above, up a flight of stairs.

It feels like an offer: another choice. She can leave if she wants to or stay and follow him for once.

She steps inside as his steps quieten. Looking up, he stands at the top of the stairs, outlined by a sliver of warm light; a silhouette cast in amber. She’s never seen someone so capable of reflecting color for one second then eclipsing it the next.

Clasping the handrail, her stare flickers over each step leading down from his feet to hers: twelve in total. That’s all it will take. She doesn’t have to leap into a depthless chasm or walk through fire, they are just stairs; a bridge at the end of which stands a man - waiting for her to cross the distance.

Laurie takes the first – then the second, ascending at a steady pace despite her heart hammering a relentless rhythm in her ears. She doesn’t think the adrenaline has ever faded, not since she first walked through the gate, and it shakes her every breath. But it is her _own_ heartbeat, not a superficial alarm fabricated by some invisible, preternatural architect who oversees her death. Before, she would heed its warning to run, hating her own body for not being able to control that beating compulsion but here… there is something exhilarating – something freeing to be found in accepting what she can’t control.

It only takes a matter of seconds and she is on the eleventh – now twelfth step. Michael steps aside, the movement automatic, allowing her passage to the lit room. She glances up at him but she can’t discern the contours of his face, just flat, negative space.

The door in front of her is already wide-open. The room must be the same one she saw from the street last time, but she never takes the time to wonder why everywhere else is left in the dark, walking through the entrance.

It’s a bedroom. Her immediate assumption is that it’s his but there are ornaments and decoration indicating otherwise, alluding to a conventional and dated femininity. Porcelain figures of women in frilled gowns – holding parasols with their hair in ribboned ringlets, framed illustrations of flowers hanging on the wall, and the most telltale indication of who the room belonged to: a golden necklace laid over the surface of a vanity table – its pendant a shimmering ‘J’. She gravitates towards it and while doing so - spots her reflection in the mirror. The mirror itself is cracked, a small piece missing in one corner but she’s distracted by how flushed her face is and self-consciously looks away, only to spy Michael standing behind her in the doorway, watching her.

Knowing the place is born from his memory, it feels less like a bedroom and more like a glorified shrine.

‘ _I’m gonna hide -’_

Laurie gasps, spinning around at a muffled voice.

It’s singing, the tune emanating from the far corner, shut inside a closet near the foot of the bed. Still recovering from her shock, she can’t clarify the lyrics until she steps closer to the melody. It sounds sad and partly innocent, like some kind of schoolgirl lament.

‘ _Listen, does this sound familiar?_

_You wake up every morning, go to school every day,_

_Spend time on the corner, just passing time away,_

_Your life is so lonely, like a child without a toy,_

_Then a miracle: a boy.’_

She flings the closet door open and grabs the needle of the vinyl player, pulling it off the whirling record.

Frowning, she doesn’t know why she felt the sudden urge to stop the song.

Accusingly, she glares at Michael, only to see he’s no longer standing in the doorway but in the centre of the bedroom – still watching her. Their gazes fixed on one another, none of them move, until something glistens below his feet.

Blood pools over the floor.

Laurie’s frown deepens. “How are you blee - ?” She almost reaches him, stopping short of arm’s length when she notices the blood isn’t coming from him but seeping through the floorboards, submerging the soles of his boots and spreading towards her toes.

Some rooms have scars. Now she knows where the wound in this one was originally cut.

_His own sister._

What made Laurie exempt from the same fate?

Worse; if he loved Judith, if everything here is remembered and illuminated in such mind-searing clarity from affection – if he even _feels_ anything like affection… Not the point.

Slowly, she sidles around the encroaching red pool, aiming to get closer to the doorway in a manner that didn’t look as if she’s trying to escape, afraid of making any abrupt attempt within his reach.

Unlike her friends, Michael isn’t so susceptible to falling for her lies.

He grabs her elbow, barring her from the exit. His grip is constrictive but painless, his fist shaking slightly.

Instead of struggling, Laurie takes a single deep breath and levels her gaze up at his, her resolute stance betraying the nervous beating inside her chest.

“If you want me to come back, you have to let me go.” Even she’s surprised by how calm the statement sounds.

Michael looks down at his fist enclosed around her arm.

“Whether you like it or not, that _thing_ is going to take one of us away from here and… you know the rest. But after that, it’s _my_ choice whether I come back or not.”

His head tilts back up, meeting her gaze.

“Whether you see me or not.”

That was assuming being matched in trials wasn’t enough for him, but as far as she had discovered, the extent of his obsess –

He lets go.

She tries to stifle her relief but she can’t help sighing a held breath.

There’s still the hallway and stairs, then the patio and front-yard, half a street… he could change his mind.

Laurie justifies her next gesture as an incentive, a promise beyond words alone that she will come back.

She reaches up, stroking along his jawline and down his neck, fingertips tracing over the puncture she’d engraved into his silicone skin.

Michael’s hand barely ghosts over hers, Laurie leaving before she can give him the chance to clasp it.

*

When she pulls back the last thicket of branches outside of the camp, there is only hushed and heavy murmuring. For once, it didn’t even cross Laurie’s mind to hurry back as soon as possible, and she feels an impending dread at having to force a lie about her overdue return. Then again, if she chooses honesty…. No. There were too many variables that could go wrong. Casualties in trials were begrudgingly tolerated but none of them knew the ramifications of being mortally stabbed outside of a game, and if someone tried to follow her to Haddonfield, she’s sure Michael won’t be so welcoming.

“Oh, thank God,” Claudette sighs, alerting everyone to Laurie’s arrival.

Laurie smiles meekly.

“We didn’t know… with what they said about how he could...” Claudette suddenly pulls Laurie into a tight hug.

Confused, Laurie looks at the weary group over Claudette’s shoulder, tentatively wrapping her arms around her. Everyone looks back at her with varying expressions of relief and surprise, apart from Nea who’s unperturbed, regarding Laurie with indifference - her chin resting in her hands.

“Let’s just say a couple of us were assuming the worst,” Meg elaborates before Laurie has to ask.

“Well, with how often he’s been breaking the rules,” Dwight mutters.

“Or they could just be new rules,” Jake argues.

Their debate fades into white noise as Claudette pulls back from Laurie and says, “Nea said she distracted him but you weren’t exactly... leaving her without a fight.”

Right. She saw that. “I guess I lost it a little.”

Nea snorts.

“So he finally managed to kill you,” Meg assumes – not an ounce of a question from the sounds of it.

Laurie can’t help glancing at Nea, wringing her hands. “He… I -”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,” Claudette interrupts Laurie’s stammering, as painfully kind as she always is.

Laurie could easily take her up on that sympathy, just let the topic end at that, but the longer she looks at Nea – the more hopelessly transparent she feels.

A half-truth is better than a whole lie.

“He didn’t kill me.”

Dwight and Jake suddenly shut up.

The only sound is silence. Laurie’s wary gaze flickering between each face boring into her, equally matched in widened eyes and lip-parted shock. Nea’s brow only briefly rises.

“But… the way Nea told us…” Dwight squints, “it didn’t exactly sound like you left yourself a window to escape before he could...”

“She’s right. I was stupid and – and I knew he wanted me the whole time so I thought I could keep him off everyone else but I – I couldn’t and when she distracted him that was all I could do. Try to pull him off her even though… even though I _know_ that’s impossible especially _here_ but I had to _try_! Because if I don’t then I’ve failed and it’s all my fault and – and...”

Claudette strokes Laurie’s arm to ease her frantic outburst but Laurie brushes off the touch, pacing towards the campfire as her hands fly about her, gesticulating anxiously.

“He kills you all because of me. He _lets_ me get away and I don’t know _why_ and it’s driving me insane. He just _watches_ me and all of you pay the price and I thought I would, too, that he just wants to save me for last because we… but at the end of it all…” She stops in her tracks, frowning down at her thumb digging into her palm. “He just took me to the hatch.”

The stunned silence is unbearable, enough so that she can’t bring herself to look up.

Someone has to break it though, eventually.

“Sounds like someone has a crush on you,” Ace remarks.

“Ace!” Claudette reprimands.

“What?” Ace shrugs, his arms crossed behind his head, back reclined against a tree stump. “She’s stressed. Sometimes the best thing to do is laugh about it.”

“So the killers can play favorites now?” Jake asks.

“No way.” Dwight looks the most disturbed. “They don’t feel anything, they’re here to _kill_ us. You think they feel _bad_ about what they’re doing? When the Trapper massacred Meg, when the Nurse strangled you with her mind, when the Hag dug into Ace’s stomach like a fucking all-you-can-eat buff --”

“I wasn’t saying they _empathize_ with us. Just that they’re able to show some kind of, I don’t know, preferential treatment. Like picking which dog to save in a pound.”

Laurie grimaces at the analogy, crossing her arms around her midriff.

“What if it was just another way to terrorize you?” Meg interjects. “Like, ‘I killed all your friends and now you’re the only one to escape with the guilt – which, here, is worse than death.’ Evil laugh.”

Dwight tilts his head and nods, entertaining the theory.

“Look, I don’t know.” Laurie sighs, her legs folding underneath her as she finally sits down on the ground. Rather than encouraging their conspiracies, she focuses on fiddling with a stray twig, unwilling to confess the entirety of her and Michael’s ‘agreement’. Not only did he aid her escape but he practically invited her into his home – his sister’s room.

And she left without any fear. On her own terms.

It’s not a question of how complicated his intentions are, but the fact that whatever they are - they’re complicating her.

And being complicated is so confusing andhe’s all she can think about and he’s _exhausting_.

“Anyway,” Jake announces, breaking the awkward lull. “I wanted to wait until everyone was here because...” His hand rustles inside his jacket, pulling out a bag of marshmallows.

“Fuck. Yes.” Meg clasps her hands together in mock-prayer.

Everyone’s faces light up, including Laurie’s, and the party make short work of passing the bag around and digging out a handful of their fair share. Soon, conversation bubbles between them all as they toast their marshmallows over the fire, Ace recounting a misadventure in Vegas where he was chased by a chimpanzee dressed up as a bus boy. Regardless of whether it’s true or not, it’s enough to coax out some trickling laughter. Laurie feels alleviated, exhaustion ebbing away into a drowsy placidity.

“What you said before...” Claudette starts quietly, leaning into Laurie. “About the hatch.”

Laurie’s smile flattens. “Yeah?”

“That happened to me once. At least, I think so now.”

One of her brows quirk. “Really? You don’t sound too sure.”

“That’s because I’m not – or I wasn’t at the time. It was hard to tell.” Claudette’s face scrunches up, concentrating. “We hadn’t been here that long. I was still hiding at every chance because I was a _dead_ giveaway, and for the first time I was the last one left standing – or crouching, to put it more accurately.”

Laurie listens, no longer paying an ounce of attention to her marshmallow golding at the edges.

Claudette’s gaze remains glued to the fire, her brown eyes glazed over with flickers of amber. “Eventually, I figure I have to find the hatch if I want to get out, so I go looking for it in the cornfield. Of course, the Hillbilly is just standing right on top of it but at that point I just want _out._ So I walk up to him - his back facing me - literally beg for him to just end it and he… just did nothing.”

Laurie stares.

“When it happened I put it down to him not hearing me, so I took the chance and escaped but… there was this second where I… I swear he looked over his shoulder at me. Like he was _choosing_ to let me escape rather than kill me. Your marshmallow’s gonna burn.”

“Wha – oh!” Laurie quickly snatches the sweet away before it gets charred.

“It just made me think about all these _what ifs_. Maybe the Entity is forcing these killers to do what they do, just like us, and if given the choice – if this was any other world they would… I don’t know.” She sighs a heavy breath, and it’s a sound Laurie recognizes all too well from herself.

“And you can’t stop thinking about it?”

“No. I _had_ to stop thinking about it. It wasn’t doing me any good and by the next trial with him it was, you know, business as usual. So I forgot it and chose to worry about all of us instead.”

Laurie looks away from Claudette, picking at the marshmallow.

“This place gets in your head. It’s changing us all but we still have each other, and that’s all that matters.” Claudette smiles, her gaze floating over her friends convened around the campfire. Her adoration is written all over her face, so honest and heartfelt that Laurie wishes she could smile, too.

She manages a quirk of her lips before biting into her toasted marshmallow. It is warm and tacky but the sugar dissolves on her tongue too fast to savor the taste.

*

When the others are pitted against Michael again, they tell Laurie that they finally have him figured out to a degree. Compared to the other killers, he’s harder to notice but much slower, rather than entrusting the Entity’s indication that he’s nearby, they need to rely on their own senses; listen out for his footfall and breathing, constantly scan around them while fixing a generator, hide away and impede his view of them as much as they can.

Dwight and Meg almost make him sound predictable.

She’s relieved that they can find ways to counter him, at the very least, but she knows by the next time she has to face Michael herself, any of their hard-earned expectations will be thrown out the window. Of course, she doesn’t say any of this, not wanting to be Miss Cynical.

*

There are string-lights on a hook.

Flickering in red and green, a few bulbs broken, wrapped around the rusted steel like amacabre, industrial Christmas tree. It’s a new embellishment that has Laurie, Meg, Claudette and Jake making ‘what the hell is this?’ faces at each other.

Suddenly, it feels like the Entity has a sense of humor. A sadistic one, albeit.

“Are we… supposed to use it?” Laurie asks.

Jake tugs at the wiring but it’s cinched tight. “I don’t think so. What could we use it for? A trip-wire? No, that would waste too much time to assemble. Maybe we can salvage the bulbs for the flashli –”

A bell rings close behind them and they each immediately scatter apart. The Wraith clubs Jake over his head but the sickening crunch of bludgeoned flesh and bone doesn’t force a cry of pain from him.

It is only when Laurie is piecing their third generator together, staring at a locker decorated in twinkling neon, that she wonders if it’s actually commemorating anything. And if so, that would mean time – or some version of it – did exist here.

She thinks of her parents then stops that train of thought.

“I think it’s just the killers messing with us,” Meg saysbeside her.

“I find it hard to imagine the Trapper in a pair of those jingling reindeer antlers.”

Meg huffs, amused. “No. But candy-cane striped bear traps… now that’s a possibility we can’t rule out.”

Laurie laughs as they finish the generator, the overhead light chiming above them.

Thanks to Meg keeping the Wraith occupied while Laurie unlocked the gate, they all manage to escape, hauling an unhooked Jake through to the clearing.On the way back to the campfire, each of them pass around suggestions on how the Entity could perfect the festive atmosphere.

“What about little Santa hats for the totems?” Claudette grins.

“Or some _actual_ food,” Jake says, already shaking off the grievous injuries he’d accumulated.

“Or making it snow,” Meg says. “Oh – oh! Do you think if we made a snowman who looks like Laurie, we could use it as a decoy against Michael?”

“Oh my God, shut up.” Laurie shoves Meg, who stumbles a little but doesn’t stop snickering.

Maybe Ace was right; laughing about it made Michael marginally more tolerable – at least when he isn’t around.

*

Back at the camp, it _is_ actually snowing.

A soft, white layer blankets the earth and the trees circling around them are stripped of any foliage, leaving bare branches that crystallize into blue-silver icicles. The ground crunches below their feet and Meg immediately greets Dwight by throwing an expertly aimed snowball at his back. He tenses but quickly grins, gathering the snow up to reciprocate the gesture. The rest who stayed have already started building a snowman, its head stopping short of their shoulders as they sculpt its three tiers with their bare hands.

They don’t need gloves.

“Don’t you think it’s a little weird that it isn’t even cold?” Dwight asks, his breath a light mist.

“Everything here is weird. Just enjoy what you can, kid,” Ace dismisses. He measures his sunglasses up against the slowly forming face of the snowman.

“But we could have hypothermia and not even -” A snowball explodes over his cheek.

Laurie snorts, immediately clasping a hand over her mouth to cover the sound. Meanwhile, Meg is barking with laughter.

Dwight sighs. “Fine.” Then he rejoins the fight, gathering some ammo and aiming a shot at Laurie.

She quickly ducks aside, biting her lip with a grin as she grabs a handful of snow to throw back at him.

Seamlessly, she alternates between helping Claudette and Ace with their frozen sculpture then hurling snowballs at Meg, Dwight, Nea and Jake, managing to land a few hits. Despite being hit a few times herself, her teeth never chatter from any wintry chill nor do her clothes stick to her with the slushy aftermath of an unsuccessful dodge. The snow just dusts over them like fog, visible but weightless.

She wonders if it’s snowing in Haddonfield, too.

Laurie excuses herself with the half-hearted lie that she wants to ‘see how far the snow reaches’, heading for the woods. Dwight is the only one who casts her a questioning look but it disappears as soon as Jake warns him to watch out.

Their laughter fading behind her, the trees form a dark canopy ofleaves above her and she sees the light from the street on the other side of the forest, its beckoning glare barely a stone’s throw away.

“Are you going home?” A voice calls – Nea.

Laurie freezes. Now she knows how Annie and Lynda felt when their parents caught them sneaking out the window. “I --” Even though it was a question, Laurie suspects Nea already knows, if it wasn’t already obvious enough by the glow of the street-light. She turns around, facing her. “Yes.”

Nea nods, slowly. “After he killed me --”

Laurie swallows, fists clenching.

“ - did he hurt you?” Another plainly spoken question, an inquiry only needing a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ response.

Despite saying it, Laurie still can’t quite believe it. “No.”

Again, Nea nods, pensive. “Be careful, it’s already dark enough just getting there.”

Laurie’s brow knots together. “You mean you can’t…”

Nea waits for her to finish.

“Never mind.” Laurie shakes her head. “I’ll… see you later then.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.”

Laurie’s gaze turns downcast as she speaks a quiet, “Thanks.”

“Don’t die on us.” And Nea walks away, waving nonchalantly.

Her acceptance leaves Laurie somewhat dumbstruck, stunned it could be so easy. But Nea always seemed impervious to everyone else’s baggage and sometimes Laurie got the impression she had a better understanding – or a more pragmatic view – of her and Michael’s… whatever it is between them.

For the first time, she walks towards Haddonfield with a natural composure, confident and curious, as if she’s regained a part of herself from long ago, unhindered by terror. Lampkin Lane emerges in plain sight and as she passes through the gate, her nerves tremorfor a second before a giddy anticipation takes a hold of her.

There’s no sign of snow but it’s home.

Any caution in her steps is non-existent as she strides towards her house, her searching stare wary of a pale face half-hidden behind a tree or fence.

Her attention roams over the windows of his house, only one lit up; the promise – or condition – she spoke all too clear in her memory. Michael can wait. Home is what she bargained for, home is what she is here for.

No figure stands behind her house’s windows, nor is the front door ajar but she knows the lack of outward evidence is barely reliable confirmation that he hasn’t already made himself welcome. And what if he had? What could she do to force him to leave? Threatening to not return here worked once but if there was anything she’d learned from babysitting Tommy, the possibility of punishment only achieved –

Laurie cringes at the comparison of the two, as if disciplining a child and appealing to a murderer’s fixation is even comparable.

She hadn’t even entertained the idea of visiting Tommy’s house yet, only a couple of doors down from her own. She wonders how he’s doing in Seattle before reminding herself that he hasn’t moved away yet; denying that time even moves here. Even if the breeze feels a little too brisk against her skin, reminding her of the first chill that harkened the season. The street would soon be a glittering landscape of Home Depot reindeer and inflatable Santas, everyone wrapped up in padded coats and woollen hats, her dad cursing as he tries to wrestle a tree into the house.

Laurie opens her front door, almost expecting the artificial scent of cinnamon from a seasonal air freshener but her living room is unlit and odorless.

Still, it’s home, even if she is the only one in it.

‘ _As far as you know,’_ Annie cautions.

Laurie flicks on the light and shuts the door behind her. She waits for a vigilant moment, listening for a creaking floorboard or omnipresent breath.

Nothing.

Semi-confident in her solitude, she locks the door – along with the chain latch.

Everything is here. Each piece of furniture, even the details that were so familiar she’d never noticed before; the TV remote with the volume buttons worn down until they were blank, the cracked vase with the hand-painted hummingbird on the fireplace mantle, the crawlspace under the stairs with the door that never shut properly. Experimentally, she turns on the TV, unsurprised yet still disappointed when it only tunes into a static screen.

Moving on, she passes through the dining room, checking the phone – no dial tone, glancing at the ceramic fruit bowl (complete with porcelain fruit) then into the kitchen – locking the back door, too. Her gaze immediately lands on the knife block, and she ensures none of the slots are empty before picking it up and grasping it to her chest, trying to think of where to hide it.

‘ _Because he can only kill you with a knife,’_ Annie comments wryly.

_They’re for me. Besides, if he wanted to he would have strangled me by now._

‘ _Then what’s the point?’_

_So I feel safe in my own home._

Ignoring Annie, she begins hiding them throughout the house, placing one in the cupboard under the sink, another under the couch cushions then, climbing upstairs, she hides the smallest one in the medicine cabinet above the bathroom sink, another in her mom’s bedside table drawer then the last one in her own bedroom – tucked under her pillow.

Holding the now-knifeless woodblock in her hands, she surveys her room… or more accurately the mess she’d left during her last visit.

Suddenly compelled, she starts to clean, picking all her clothes up off the floor and dropping them on the bed ready to fold, closing all her drawers and cupboard doors, re-ordering all her records and books.

Her hairbrush is still missing but nothing else seems to be stolen.

She instils a domestic order back into her room, flitting around everything and returning it to a state that makes sense. For a few minutes, she forgets the world outside her window until she swats the dust out of her curtains and catches him standing in her front-yard.

Michael stares up at her. This view is familiar, too, but unlike the first time she doesn’t recoil from his distant gaze. Maybe it’s because she has a knife within reach and all the doors are locked.

She forgot the garage.

Disappearing from his line of sight, she rushes through the hall and downstairs, wincing as she catches her hip on TV table – scrambling for the garage door’s bolt. Just as it clicks in place, the front door handle rattles and she spins around, almost expecting the wall to be shaking, too.

She made a deal. That didn’t include her house.

Retrieving her house keys hanging on the wall by the stairs, she grasps the door handle and it immediately stills. Inhaling a lungful of air, she twists the lock, only opening it as far as the safety latch allows.

He gazes down at her through the gap, hands by his sides. She keeps forgetting how tall he is, having to amend where her eyes land to level with his face.

For a lengthening moment, she’s speechless, re-gathering her ability to just _talk_.

“Before I come out, I need to lay down some ground rules so… so we can reach some kind of understanding.” She hates how her voice still wavers when she’s trying to stand her ground. “My- my house is off limits, okay? Whether I’m in here or not – it’s _mine_. You’re not allowed in.”

One of his hands clenches into a fist. She grips the door handle tighter.

“But – but that doesn’t mean you won’t see me at all. As long as you respect this one rule, I won’t --” She wills the words to leave her lips, “I won’t run anymore.”

His fist unclenches.

She chooses to believe that means he understands. “Okay?... Okay,” she says – more for herself than him.

Shaking her head, she closes the door and unlocks it fully, then reopens it just enough for her to sidle through. Which proves to be a task, Michael refusing to move out of the way so she has to squeeze between him and the door to lock it with the key. It’s more inconvenient than uncomfortable, the claustrophobic proximity forcing her pulse to spike as she turns her back on him briefly.

Pocketing the key, her scalp tickles but she puts it down to nerves until feeling a loose tugging sensation on her hair. Turning back around, she finds him clasping a blond tendril – stroking the strands between his thumb and forefinger. It is disarmingly non-violent.

“I’m not cutting it off again,” she states, frowning as her hand rises between them to pull her own hair out of his grasp.

He releases his hold on her, only to grip her wrist and hold her hand in place.

“Wh-” Her palm aligning directly with his gaze, she instinctively tries to tug herself free but knows better, her arm soon going lax.

He’s… studying her, using the hand not holding hers in place to trace his thumb over her palm, barely pressing into the firm pad above her wrist, smoothing over the soft divet that slopes into her knuckles, inspecting each crease and contour as if they requirehis paramount curiosity. His breathing is still slow but louder, his mask barely suppressing the air pouring in and out of him.

It is not painful in the slightest but the opposite, intimate and considerate and intrusive in a way that makes her shudder, blushing and looking away from his fingertips dragging over each of her own, grazing her nails and cuticles, dipping between her middle and ring finger towards the thin web of translucent skin. She feels like she’s being memorized, committed to his senses in a way that wasn’t possible before – not when she only fought back.

And she fought back because his are killing hands, incapable of any care or delicacy, they were hands built to harm – to take life away.

Laurie can barely hear herself think. “Okay, that’s enough.” She snatches her hand away from him, clutching it to herself.

Michael looks back up at her, accepting the loss while she stares at him, her brow creasing in disbelief.

Then he reaches towards her face.

She immediately steps back and shies away from the touch.

Her voice sounds heavy, “Just… one thing at a time,” she croaks - her throat dry.

He steps closer, as if he has an aversion to them being more than a few inches apart, but his arms fall back down to his sides.

As soon as she moves again, descending the few steps to her front-yard, he ensures there is no distance between them, his chest repeatedly bumping into her back.

_I guess I’m just going to have to get used to that._

As well as the intermittent _petting_ (his fingers hovering over her shoulders, threading through her hair, skirting the back of her neck), any spatial awareness she has is taken over by Michael, hyper-aware of the onslaught of fleeting touches, even when he doesn’t touch her at all.

She tolerates it as she walks down the lane, her senses clouded as she reminds herself where exactly she’s going – even when her destination is right ahead. Tommy’s house passes by her periphery but before she can let her mind be diverted by the possibility, she has to concentrate on the gate, Michael’s hand creeping over the curving crook between her neck and shoulder.

A step away from leaving, and he grips her hard - pulling her back against him.

She balks in protest, spinning around to face him. “Hey! What did I say last time?”

He’s not staring directly down at her, instead his head is canted to the side.

Baffled, she follows his line of sight – finding nothing on the brick wall he’s looking at. Then she turns to face him again and her gaze naturally lands on the hole in the neck of his mask.

_Oh._

Trying to still her fingers from trembling, she strokes along his plastic neck, thumbing the perforation. That should be it. She should not stay to listen to his gasp, nor should she stay to trail her touch down to where his mask meets bare skin, prying between his collar to trace the taut sinew under flesh that’s burning – clammy and feverish and she doesn’t know if the sound that she draws out of him is a second-long sigh or a hum.

Blinking, she blanches at her curiosity and steps out of reach.

Like so often, Michael watches as she turns away and retreats into the woods.

*

The blinking fairy-lights quickly lose their novelty, inciting irritation more than anything, their decorative place here mocking them all.

Nea successfully dismantles a few bear traps thanks to a toolbox Jake has given her and, for once, the group manage to fix a few generators before any of them have stepped into a tetanus-riddled pair of jaws. They get confident – hopeful, their collective escape rising on the non-existent horizon.

Until, after a lengthy chase, Meg is hooked in the basement – her scream piercing through the storehouse. Laurie, hidden outside the crumbling building, makes swift work of rushing to save her, waiting until the looming pulse disappears to scurry around a few corners and down the basement stairs, deftly dodging a trap waiting to bite into her ankle. As she descends, the concrete wall flashes green and red like a clandestine, underground club but as she reaches the bottom of the stairs, she finds the lockers nor the hooks have lights twined around them.

It’s Meg.

Her arms are tied to her sides; thighs, knees, shins and ankles cinched together with a grotesquely bright tourniquet, as if she’s a human ornament suspended from the branch of a pine tree.

Laurie swallows her shock before it can petrify her, reaching out to unhook Meg – who quickly shakes her head, lips thinned in pain.

Right. Unhooking her before untying her would be too risky if the Trapper comes back.

Digging out the shard of glass from her pocket, Laurie starts with Meg’s arms, slicing through the bindings – only able to cut one wire at a time. She hoped with wire one broken, all of them would miraculously unravel, but releasing Meg is difficult, especially as Laurie tries to avoid adding to her injuries by accidentally sawing into her skin.

The Entity’s clutches begin to glisten, crackling around them. Just as a black talon sweeps down to skewer Meg, the trappings around her torso loosen and fall to the ground. She grunts in her efforts to wrestle off the Entity’s hunger as Laurie crouches down, gritting her teeth and slicing at the lights around Meg’s legs as fast as she can.

“Oh, dios mio...” a voice breathes behind them – Ace. Nea is with him, too, and the two immediately join Laurie’s efforts, Nea using a screwdriver to pry the wire away for Laurie to cut, Ace untangling the loosened wire until it drops on the floor, offering small comforts of, ‘It’s alright, we’ve got you.’

Finally, Meg is granted mobility and Laurie lifts her off the hook.

“Thanks.” Meg grimaces, stepping out of the pool of torn lights.

“Anytime.” Laurie smiles weakly, she and Ace applying pressure to the rapidly closing wound left by the hook.

“Since when is this shit allowed to fly?” Ace scowls.

“It’s a new one, I’ll give him that,” Meg says, humorlessly.

Laurie glances behind her to see Nea crouched over the ground, staring down at the flashing lights in her hands. “Remember what Jake said about a trip-wire?”

Laurie’s brow shoots up and she slowly grins. Ace‘s brow wrinkles, confused. And from Meg there is a more than enthused, “Oh, fuck yeah.”

“Here, you two take this side.” Nea gives one end of the wire to Laurie and Ace. “Hide behind the corner there.”

“What are we –?” Ace grips the cord anyway, Laurie pulling him over to crouch behind the wall bordering stairs.

“Meg, grab this end. I’ll disarm the trap on the stairs and he should --”

As expected, they all hear the same pulse approaching.

Nea hurries away. There’s a _snap_ then she reappears, grasping the end of the wire alongside Meg.

“Laurie, when you see his leg, pull it up to here.” From their crouched position, she raises the wire to her shoulder. “But make sure it’s flat before.”

Meg stifles a giggle. Laurie nods.

“Are we seriously -” Ace is cut off by Meg’s shushing, the pulse loud as heavy footsteps thud down the stairs.

Shoulder flush against the wood-plated wall, Laurie can’t see her adjacent teammates.

The single lax wire they grasp is non-suspicious, mingling with the rest tangled over the floor. Soon, she can hear the Trapper’s bullish breaths. He’s close, thumping down the last few steps then -

“Now!”

They all yank the flashing lights towards themselves.

Nothing happens.

He stepped on the wire, and despite the four of them using all their strength to pull the light taut, it doesn’t budge under his boot.

He looks down at their failed scheme, then at Laurie and Ace, then at Nea and Meg – peeking around the wall. All of them slack-jawed, any childish anticipation drained from their faces.

Ace is the first to try and flee, almost slipping as he skirts around Laurie and tries to duck past the Trapper. His escape is easily countered, the killer grabbing him by his shirt and heaving him onto a hook. As Ace’s screech rips through the basement, Nea – using herself as a barricade to protect Meg - is sliced over her torso and pushed aside, slamming into the wall hard enough that the wood splinters.

Laurie slowly stands up, reaching out to try and save Ace as the Trapper corners Meg but he barely has to take two steps back to grab Laurie’s wrist and wrench her towards him.

She cries out, the angle twisting her elbow so something dislocates or breaks, the pain so severe she drops to the ground.

It shouldn’t be so easy for him.

These weren’t the rules.

Nostrils flaring with every agonized breath, Laurie looks up to see the machete’s blade poised against Nea’s neck.

“You. Or them.” His voice is low and gruff.

It’s the first time she’s heard any killer speak.

“Wh… what?” Meg is backed into the wall – she hadn’t even stood up.

“Pick one.”

“But I don’t know what – if that means who lives or -”

His fist twists around Laurie’s arm and she bites back a yelp.

“You. Or. Them.”

Meg looks between each of her teammates, tortured by fear and indecision. The Trapper holds the blade closer to Nea’s neck, and Laurie pays for Meg’s uncertainty as her bones are crushed under his brutalizing grip – forcing her to scream.

“Okay, okay! Me! Kill m-”

But it’s Nea who is massacred first.

Her neck is not just sliced but skewered, the vertical point of the machete heaved through her throat, cutting her open from below her chin to the top her sternum, blood spraying over the ground as she chokes and clutches at the fatal wound.

“No, no, no! I thought -”

Laurie is released, only to be shoved to the floor by the sole of his boot.The blade is yanked from her teammate and spears through her back, cracking through her ribcage, searing a jagged gash through one of her lungs andtearing another scream out of her.

Blood wheezing from her lips, she hears the last of Meg’s shrieking protests, _‘_ _That’s not fair!_ _That’s not how it works!’_

Then her voice fragments into nothing but distant vibrations, lost as Laurie prays for a quick death to relinquish the pain.

*

Everyone is restless around the campfire as they await Meg’s return.

Laurie is unable to carry a conversation for long, Dwight is pacing towards the edge of the forest and back again – treading cycling trails into the snow, Jake and Ace are playing cards (each of them having to repeatedly remind each other what exactly they’re playing), Claudette is poking the perpetually lit fire. Nea leaves for brief intervals, no doubt blaming herself despite Laurie trying to assure her that nobody holds it against her.

“Wanting to get back at them, even in a small way, everyone gets that,” Laurie says, considering patting Nea on the arm before stopping herself, wary of being condescending.

“It didn’t work. And it cost us.” Nea refuses to meet Laurie’s gaze, hugging her legs to her chest, her eyes glued to the fire. A reflection of the flames dances in her gaze but all Laurie can see is a cold and harsh defeat.

“Mistakes happen. Maybe next time we--”

“There won’t be a next time,” Nea cuts her off with a blunt finality. She gets up and leaves again, disappearing into the woods.

It _was_ a massacre. But Laurie is more perturbed by the image of Meg tied up with the lights. They had all rested on the assumption that killers had their own restrictions – laws they had to abide under the Entity’s rule. If the Trapper could use his surroundings to tie anyone up, why couldn’t Laurie use what her own town provided against Michael when they first got here?

A scream suddenly echoes beyond the trees but it’s not out of terror; it’s frustration and anger, a rage often muted by the stuffing of a pillow or sink full of water.

Meg storms into the camp, hands balled up into white-knuckled fists. “That fucking –!” She kicks a first-aid kit, catapulting it into a tree trunk with a loud _thunk_ , narrowly missing Nea re-emerging from the thicket. “Piece of shit-dick Jason knock-off bastard!” She growls – no, roars, then collapses to the ground, as if there’s nothing left in her legs to keep them standing.

Speechless, everyone stares at her until Claudette asks, “Do you wanna talk about it?"

“No,” Meg croaks, she’s never sounded so… small. “Not yet.”

“What about a hug?” Claudette offers.

Meg’s face wrinkles up, tears spilling down her cheeks.

Everyone rushes over to kneel beside her.

*

There is a persistent, hand-shaped bruise still marking Laurie’s arm. An inky purple bleeding into a bile-yellow stain. She tries to avoid looking at it too much.

But Michael seems intent on bringing it to her attention.

She’d barely been in Haddonfield for more than a few paces, reaching the sidewalk outside Tommy’s house, and she’s unceremoniously greeted by Michael grabbing her wrist, forcing her to spin around.

“Wh – hey!”

It doesn’t hurt but being grabbed out of nowhere is no less of a shock. He holds her arm up, the bruise aligning with his gaze and she shrinks into herself slightly.

“What, I can’t see other killers now?” She jabs dryly, trying to pull her arm back.

He only solidifies his grip, his head turning to her. It feels evaluative and accusatory.

The realization widens her eyes. “Wait. You… you really don’t know.”

How could he? When he’s inhibited to here and the occasional trial, why would he be aware of anyone else but the Entity and who it threw at him?

She wonders how insular his life has always been. From home to Smith’s Grove to… her then _this_.

Then she buries her sympathy. He doesn’t deserve it.

Scowling, she turns away from him and continues down the path to her home. Unable to ignore how he’s tethered himself onto her, she chooses not to care until she has no choice but to – reaching her front door. Still, she retrieves the key from her pocket but as soon as she slots it into the lock, he yanks her back towards him – pulling a yelp from her as she collides into his chest.

He remembers that her house is off-limits, at least.

Quickly, she recollects herself, her jaw clenching as she turns to glare at him. “Let _go._ ”

He doesn’t, of course, the two of them tied together as he just stares down at her. His height is equally as infuriating as his strength.

“If you don’t let go...” She can’t think of an ultimatum.

_And I shouldn’t have to, damnit._

With no warning, she digs out the glass shard from its perennial place in her pocket and plunges it into Michael’s arm. He lets go of her with a muffled grunt, and as he recoils the jagged blade drags through his flesh until Laurie pulls it back out, hurrying to unlock her door then slam it shut behind her, twisting the latch.

She stares at the door, anticipating a rattling handle or the pounding of fists but there is no sound.

Waiting, she doesn’t even hear his breath on the other side.

Easing her guard, for the time being, she tucks the modest weapon back into her pocket, wincing.

Holding it stings.

She looks down at her palm and experimentally presses her thumb into a miniscule cut - only discernible from the bead of blood – and sucks in a sharp breath.

Instead of worrying over what feeling pain means here, she scurries to the bathroom upstairs and rinses her hand under the faucet until the water washing over her skin drips clear. Then, like always, she heads for her bedroom.

Everything is still illuminated the way she left it, organized with some clutter here and there. A couple of stray pieces of clothing are strewn over her bed; a floral skirt she quickly folds away – one she had forgotten after donating to charity, and there’s her prom dress – a lilac gown she spent months sewing from a pattern book her mom found, filled with prairie styles. She hangs the dress in her wardrobe with care, smoothing out any wrinkles.

Finally, she’s able to look at her room and nothing feels amiss. The alarm clock is still soundless, frozen on twelve’o’clock, and it’s all the assurance she needs that time here is unmoving; this world is not spinning. The twinkling lights, the snow… it’s all just smoke and mirrors and make-believe. None so different to when she and Annie and Lynda used to pretend the garden was a stage, the flowerbed their audience and the three of them were a world-famous girl band when they were just kids.

The song in Judith’s room echoes in her mind, and Laurie gravitates towards her own record collection, desperate to hear something she doesn’t have to listen to. Thumbing through the immaculately kept albums, she finds The Supremes and with a newfound reverence for what’s hers, she slides the vinyl out of its case and lays it on the slip mat of the turntable. The press of a button and the drop of the needle, and the voice of Diana Ross croons through her bedroom, replacing the ceaseless droning of her thoughts with song.

Lacking the drive to do much else, Laurie sits on her bed and stares at the wall, her pupils flitting between the cream-yellow paint and the dust scattering over the airwaves. For a moment, everything feels shapeless – without form – and she imagines that if she touched anything, her fingers would fade right through it.

She blinks and stands up, refocusing her sight only to frown at the record player.

The song is abruptly cut-off, along with the lights – her room darkened.

Her turntable isn’t even there.

Neither is anything else in her bedroom.

The air deadens. She tries to move but can’t, as if her own body no longer answers to her own mind – at least, for a few seconds.

She’s in a trial.

Immediately, her priorities shift. She doesn’t allow herself to be shocked by the transition, searching for a generator in the house. Finding one at the bottom of the stairs, she begins to pry through the machinery, methodically repairing it as seconds stretch on.

There is no indication of who the killer is until she glances at the doorway and feels his shadow stalking across the town.

His head turns, as if acknowledging he knows where she is, yet he doesn’t change his course towards her. Instead, he slowly advances ahead of him then raises his knife.

Dwight is the first to be found.

While the generator churns on, she tries to formulate a plan. From their previous matches against one another, he only seemed to benefit from her presence, her ‘distractions’ only amplifying his efficiency in hunting down her teammates. Maybe the best thing to do is stay away from him completely.

But with their shared sight…

Fear gnaws at her; the possibility of failing everyone again, the memory of their lifeless bodies and gormless faces staring at her from the ground. But the fear feels manageable, no longer so senseless and volatile – no longer threatening to mutate into terror.

She finishes the first generator, at which point someone else – Meg – is hurt. Laurie leaves the house, avoiding the main road and staying close by the fencing and hedges, eyes scanning around sharp corners and thin pathways for another generator.

Those string-lights are tied around the lockers and hooks again.

As soon as she catches a glimpse of Michael in the distance, she looks away – avoiding any lasting indication of her whereabouts. Then she sneaks past a shrub, through a compressed garden. In the park, she hears belabored breaths and finds Dwight crouching behind a bench, struggling to wrap a bandage around his shoulder.

“Here,” Laurie whispers, huddling next to him.

Dwight jolts but doesn’t miss the chance for a quip. “Nice town you got here. Can’t rate the neighbors too high, though.”

Laurie snorts, lightly swatting his hand away from the gauze. “You’ll get used to it, eventually.”

Another generator announces it’s been fixed.

He huffs, amused, then starts wiping the blood off his hands onto his trousers. “He was so damn quiet, I didn’t even know he was right behind me.”

“He does that.” She secures the temporary bandage with a quick and clinical indifference, focusing more on getting the job done as soon as possible rather than ensuring Dwight’s comfort.

“But this was _more_ quiet. Like, dead silent.”

Laurie feels something nudge her back. And when Dwight looks up from his stained palms, his gaze climbs far above her face.

“Speak of the dev-”

The air is knocked out of her as Michael cinches an arm around her waist and _pulls,_ simultaneously slashing Dwight across his shoulder and chest, cutting the bandage that Laurie had just tied in place. Dwight bellows, collapsing onto the ground as Laurie is crushed against Michael’s chest, her feet not even touching the floor anymore. His arm is like a harness keeping her anchored in the air – anchored to him.

She squirms in his steel embrace like a domesticated cat refusing to be handled, pushing against him with the heels of her hands. He’s motionless, trapping her while standing over Dwight, and when she looks up at his face, the black caverns of his gaze are fixed down on the man bleeding out over the grass.

Michael’s chest rises and deflates under her fingers with a contained frenzy, his breaths falling fast, his enveloping hold squeezing tighter until she squeaks in pain. She clutches at his elbow, trying to wrestle it from digging into her hip, embarrassed while Dwight is no doubt _seeing_ this.

Another generator is finished, and only then does Michael drop her, Laurie ducking out from underneath his arm. He grips Dwight by his tie to haul him over his shoulder then marches away.

Laurie runs from the spot, shaking off her confusion as she seeks out the fourth generator. She’d already attracted too much attention from healing Dwight, unhooking him is bound to end in his premature death.

She enters one of the less recognizable homes, hearing the machinations of a generator that hasn’t been worked on for too long. Turning into a room, she finds Claudette and quickly joins her.

“Had a hunch you’d be here,” Claudette says.

Laurie’s brow creases. “How?”

“It’s just like you said. Because he always… acts up. Or acts different.”

Laurie can’t dispute her.

A short time passes but Dwight is yet to be hooked - just as the realization reaches Laurie, he’s dropped to the ground not too far away, in the second storey of a house.

She looks over but it’s difficult to deduce what Michael is doing, the glimmer of his silhouette revealing him to be hunched over the ground. Confused, she stops her ministrations on the generator and paces towards where Dwight was dropped: inside her house.

“Can you – do you know what’s happening?” Claudette asks, following after Laurie – equally bewildered.

“No, I...” Her footsteps quicken down the sidewalk to her yard.

Dwight yells a single syllable, the sound coming from upstairs – her room.

Laurie and Claudette stop, squinting up at the window. He rises into view, clawing at his neck and Laurie thinks of Nea in the basement, but there’s no blood pouring through his fingers.

Lights. He’s clawing at green and red lights.

Laurie gasps. “Oh my God.”

Dwight tumbles through the window then drops down like an abandoned puppet with only one string to hang him. His scream is cut short to a choke.

She and Claudette rush forward but he’s suspended too high up to cut the wiring, his feet dangling just above their heads. They grab the soles of his sneakers and push up, trying to relieve the pull of the noose. Dwight coughs, spluttering for air, but the two of them can’t hold him up forever.

“I’m going upstairs – to cut it!” Laurie yells, only managing to stretch her arms up so far, her elbows giving way.

“But I can’t…” Claudette grimaces, glancing frantically between Laurie and up at Dwight.

“It’s the only way!”

Claudette is only conflicted for a few seconds but it feels like a minute before she responds, “Okay. Just be as quick as you can!”

Laurie nods then sprints across the yard, through her front door, bounding upstairs - skipping each second step. He must have tied the lights to a locker or generator to keep Dwight suspended. She finally reaches her room -

Michael is standing in the middle of it, his knife in one hand. In the other: green and red blinks around his fist, hanging by his side as if there isn’t a person hanging from the other end.

He’s not turned towards the window but already facing her, as if he knew she would come up here.

Unlike with Meg, she can’t just cut the wire. There’s no getting past Michael, he could grab her – ensnare her like he always does.

She could stab his arm but how could that guarantee he would let go? From the looks of it, he’d wound the wire around his knuckles until it formed a thick band, it wouldn’t –

He brings his fist up to his chest, effortlessly pulling the body hanging from the window higher. She can hear Dwight suffocating, Claudette shrieking.

“No!” Laurie yells, reaching out and rushing towards Michael before she can stop herself.

He drops his knife, grabbing her outstretched wrist and wrenches her into him. When he lets go it’s only for a second, and though she makes an effort to escape, he forces her back into his encompassing hold – his arm locking around the back of her waist and pulling her as close as any two people can be.

She beats against his chest, clenching her jaw, but his embrace only traps her against him.

“I’m not – ” _yours_ _!_ _,_ she almost shouts.

It didn’t matter how true it is to her or not – if it’s true enough to him.

Ceasing her struggling, she looks up at his face.

As soon as she does, his fist enclosed around the lights rises higher, reaching to touch her, but he’s only able to move by an inch, the body tied to the other end stopping him. He growls with frustration, and she squints.

Her fingers, along with her gaze, slide down his chest to the wire tied around his hand.

“If you want me that bad, you have to let go of him,” she says, plainly. It’s both a statement of fact and a challenge.

His fingers flex around her waist.

“Then it’ll just be us. That’s what you want, right?”

Seconds drag on between them. To anyone else it would look like she’s bargaining with a brick wall but she can feel his hand on her back twitching, deliberative. The green and red light dances over his face and yet again, it’s the most vivid she’s ever seen the colors here, hypnotic and dizzying.

Slowly, he yields, fingers laying out under hers into an open palm.

She pinches a piece of wire, tugs, and it unravels, falling to the floor and squirming to escape out the window like a snake released back into the wild.

She doesn’t even hear Dwight fall, shivering with the wave of power that swallows her senses. And Michael swallows her with his gaze, his freed palm stroking along her jawline, fingers combing through her hair to settle at the nape of her neck. She clenches her jaw to repress a shaky sigh, clenching the collar of his coveralls as her skin prickles under his touch.

He leans down, thumb tracing the shape of her cheekbone, descending over the concave leading to her lips.

“Laurie! Dwight’s okay! And we’re almost...” Claudette doesn’t even gasp, left voiceless.

Laurie cranes her head around, suddenly awoken from the flood of sensation.

It’s exactly how it looks. There’s no way Laurie will able to conceal the truth displayed right in front of Claudette.

“Finish the generators and _go,_ ” Laurie instructs.

Claudette lingers in the doorway, mouth hanging half-open.

Michael’s fingers dig into Laurie’s neck, blunt nails indenting her flesh. She’s not sure what’s inspired his ire more; Claudette’s interruption or that it demands Laurie’s attention to stray from him.

“Claudette, I’ll be fine,” Laurie implores, her tone level and assertive.

Claudette’s expression eases, mouth snapping shut. She doesn’t nod – she just leaves, her footsteps hurrying down the stairs into eventual silence.

Laurie turns back to face Michael, swallowing thickly.

His breaths are heavy and long, only inhaling sharply when she settles her left hand in the crook of his elbow, her right still clinging to his collar. She acquiesces to his fascination, remaining still while the pad of his thumb drags over her bottom lip, almost close enough to taste his skin. It’s a bestial intimacy, fed by nothing but desire, ignorant to any sense of prudish convention or boundary. She knows he is recording her every reaction, her grip tightening on his arm as he gently pries her mouth open. Her chest rises and falls – near hyperventilating as his thumb creeps between her teeth.

Overwhelmed by the heat rushing up her neck - burning hot and cold at the same time, she cringes away from the intrusion. Immediately, she regrets the rejection, expecting him to just grab her jaw and force her to face him but, instead, he leans down further, his back curving until his face is buried in her neck.

Her skin perspires against plastic.

His hand encasing the back of her neck turns into an arm, fingers threading through tendrils of her hair then closing around them, not pulling on her but tangling himself _to_ her, inhaling the salt of her skin to his lung’s full capacity.

_To be wanted so much_ ; she covers her mouth with both hands, afraid of the small sound that escapes her.

She has no idea whether the others have escaped yet or not, deaf to anything or anyone save for Michael. He breathes a slowly dragging sigh – the hint of a voice.

Laurie lets go of her mouth but still clutches her hands together, crossed over her chest, as if it will stop the tremor. “I… I have to go.”

His face melds into her neck, his arm around her back cinching - holding her impossibly closer.

“We both know this isn’t… this isn’t Haddonfield.”

His breath silences and after a few beats, he pulls back enough to meet her gaze. The propinquity of his stare is still so close that she may as well be blindfolded, those twin, void-black pits no different to when she closes her eyes. She can’t see any sign of a gaze beyond it.

And she doesn’t want to.

It is easier to fathom she’s staring back at a statue, like a Hellenistic sculpture come to life, something carved and embedded with a meaning she can decipher. She wants to study him and take him apart like iconography; smash him to pieces, put him back together and leave out any fragment that suggests his humanity.

Because it is surely inhuman to be possessed like this.

“We can’t stay here forever.” Still, she finds herself trying to reason with whatever glimmer of humanity he may have. “Don’t you want to go home? Where it’s just ours?”

He looks away from her, out the glassless window, where his own house should stand opposite – but it doesn’t.

Laurie unclasps her hands and reaches behind her, grasping for his fingers around her waist to peel them off but Michael reflexively grips onto her blouse. She frowns, until he suddenly trades the arm encircling her shoulders for the backs of her thighs, bending down and hoisting her off her feet.

She balks, clawing at his coveralls for balance as she’s carried upright against his chest and shoulder, her legs folded against his abdomen, his arms forming a make-shift seat.

Her face is at a level height with his own and all she’s able to watch as he walks out of the room is his profile. There are slight discolorations to his mask she never noticed before, so unable to look away from his vacuous stare; his silicone skin is marred by shallow marks like nicks left by thorns, there is greying on the tip of his nose, his neck gradiates into a pale fleshy tone.

Yes, he’s a statue, but a statue with the gaze of a skull.

In a focused daze, she doesn’t realize they’re already at the gate until he turns to look at her, stopping in his tracks. Instinctively, Laurie grips the fabric in her hands tighter before letting go, waiting. He breathes three times before she has to clear her throat and tell him, “You can put me down now.”

And he does, bending down so she can finally extricate herself out of his arms and set her feet back on the ground.

She knows not to flee so soon and, without his prompt, she caresses the puncture in his neck. Her touch only strays an inch, but it’s enough so her palm lays flat beside his throat.

Even through the plastic, she can feel his heartbeat, and her caress turns into a white-knuckled grip as she _squeezes._

_I could strangle him right now._

And he would let her just to feel her; his head tilting up to bare his neck, half-groaning - the sound half-broken yet thrumming under her hand all the same.

But she snatches her hand back, afraid of the compulsion.

Turning away, she doesn’t glance over her shoulder as she crosses into the clearing.

Nobody has held her so close for so long and she resents that it had to be him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few things:
> 
> 1\. The song Laurie hears in Judith's room is 'I Can Never Go Home Anymore' by The Shangri-Las. Expect more info on Judith in the future... I've always hced that she was integral in Michael's upbringing but she also had a life of her own.  
> 2\. Music will be a recurrent / occasional feature. Especially since communication between Michael and Laurie is verbally one-sided and majorly physical. And when you remember how they first met...  
> 3\. I have a tumblr and twitter by the @ I use here... please god if you post the Mylaurie content, throw yourself at me because I am fucking STARVING all the time.


	5. Remember to Forget

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Laurie meets Judith for herself. 
> 
> Michael is a stay-at-home stalker.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many many many thanks for the kudos and responses to the last chapter. I found myself overwhelmed (in a good way!) and the reviews really did help in powering through some difficult parts!

“We need to talk.” Claudette’s voice is clear and assertive among the din of the woods, her face appearing beside a tree. She doesn’t sound angry but there’s no room for argument.

Stopping in her tracks, Laurie freezes, inhaling a shaky breath. Is this the first step in being excommunicated from the team? Is excommunication even possible? Regardless, she eventually gathers herself enough to nod and reply with a, “Y-Yeah.”

“Okay, where do I even start...”

Laurie swallows, a queasy anxiety coiling in her stomach.

“Look, I’m not saying _any_ of this is your fault. I can’t even imagine what you have to go through every time you’re in a trial together, even though I’ve seen it…” Claudette’s direct gaze strays, looking down for a beat, “but… what he did to Dwight.”

Laurie doesn’t realize how deeply her nails have been digging into her palms until she unclenches her fists.

“He’s dangerous, Laurie. But I’m less scared of him than I’m scared for you – for all of us.”

She expected to be lectured, to have to beg for a chance to explain herself but, somehow, Claudette’s concern feels worse, as if she’s adopted the burden. “But… you don’t need to be,” Laurie says, taking a step towards her. “He let everyone go because I – I… well, you saw.” She’s still trying to wrap her head around _what_ exactly Claudette saw, imagining how she and Michael looked from the objective perspective of the doorway. Entwining himself around her, brushing his thumb down her cheek. And then what Claudette _didn’t_ see. Her chest burns, ears ringing, the memory of her blood – hot and palpable underneath her skin - destroying her ability to judge the scene outside of her own interior experience.

“Yeah, but what happens next time?” Claudette asks, fearful.

The question wakes Laurie from her daze. She can’t answer that. Each of their trials against Michael fluctuated in the survivability of the group, a single mistake leading to their catastrophic deaths. Or worse.

The Christmas lights only hinted to the extent of Michael’s sadism. She remembers Annie laid under the tombstone, Bob hanging from the ceiling by his feet, Lynda in the wardrobe, each of them lax and lifeless and poised as nothing but an exhibition.

It’s never _just_ been about killing. And now, with death a respite from what Michael could do to anyone, what was going to stop him from torturing anyone else who so much as brushed against Laurie’s shoulder?

She stares at Claudette, hopeless in her silent response.

“Hate to interrupt but,” Jake calls, approaching through the branches, “we’ve got some new blood.”

Both Claudette and Laurie turn away from their conversation, although it couldn’t really be called as such anymore – both women only standing speechless, reflecting each other’s uncertainty. Laurie is thankful for the interruption, though she tries to hide her relief as she and Claudette quickly follow Jake back to the glow of the campfire.

The new girl, Feng Min, is understandably having trouble processing her new life. She isn’t outright distraught, nor trying to convince herself _none of this is really happening_ , just absorbing the onslaught of information with a numb, glazed over look, sitting on a tree stump with her hands gripping her knees.

“So this is all like a game and right now we’re in the lobby,” she concludes matter-of-factly.

“Basically, yeah,” Dwight nods. “Though there’s no loading screens, so there’s a plus.”

Feng’s mouth quirks slightly.

“Finally!” Meg claps her hands. “Another nerd. Now Feng’s here, we don’t have to pretend to know what Dwight’s talking about half the time.”

Dwight shoots her a mock-offended look.

Meg snorts, rolling her eyes.

Laurie notices the group are more casual with Feng than they were when she, herself, arrived, no doubt due to the fact Feng had acclimatized so quickly. She is succinct in her responses to their questions: she’s from a Chinese city called Changchun, her job was in ‘esports’ (Laurie will have to ask what exactly the ‘e’ means later, though she deduces it’s something to do with the video games the others have described to her), and – no – she hasn’t met anyone who’s tried to murder her before. But Laurie gets the sense that Feng is replying out of manners more than an actual acceptance of their curiosity, as if she’s secretly hoping for each question to be the last.

“Do you want everyone to stop interrogating you?” Laurie asks, her tone wry.

Feng immediately replies with a blunt, “Please.”

And so the group move on to different topics, splitting up into separate conversations bubbling over one another. Except Laurie refrains from joining the pocket Claudette, Meg and Ace have formed, still unable to shake off the unfinished _talk,_ and whenever she so much as thinks of playing referee to one of Dwight and Jake’s debates, her voice is stolen from her by guilt, the image of Dwight hanging from her window still searedinto the backs of her eyelids - as bright as those doom-saying signsyou pass on a Bible Belt highway.

Feng already slipped off into the woods, and they all leave her be. Laurie has no idea where Nea is until she suddenly sits down next to her.

“So you all escaped,” Nea states simply.

Laurie’s brow lifts, surprised by the reminder. “Yeah, I guess we did.”

“That’s good.”

“But what he did to Dwi -”

“But what? You saved him in the end. You saved everyone.”

Laurie stalls, her mouth agape with a rebuttal that she can’t even think of, then she huffs - smirking. “Always the optimist, huh?”

Nea shrugs, shooting back a smirk of her own. “Or maybe you’re just cynical. It’s better to take small victories when we can.”

  
  


*

  
  


The Christmas lights no longer twinkle in the periphery of their trials anymore and everyone is thankful for it.

Instead, they get a hospital.

Laurie never liked hospitals.

Her first memory was when she was no older than ten and had caught a vicious flu bug. Her mom sped them off to Haddonfield Memorial one night as soon as Laurie complained about chest pains, each of them still in their pajamas and dressing gowns. Nothing was wrong that actually required any emergency attention, but her mom was especially susceptible to caving into a protective paranoia during Laurie’s childhood. They left with a bottle of medicine that was supposed to be child-friendly in its sickeningly sweet banana flavor, but it still made Laurie pull a sour face whenever she had to swallow a spoonful.

Her second experience was visiting her grandpa after he suffered a stroke – some time when she was twelve or thirteen. She recalls being confused more than anything, pressing her parents to explain what exactly a stroke was, guarded from any understanding of the critical threat it held. It was the first time her dad yelled at her, his curt and distressed, ‘Laurie! Now is not the time!’ booming throughout the waiting room and inextricably tying itself to her memory of the entire ordeal. She tried not to cry, her chin wobbling as a muted football game on a TV screen blurred into nothing but a stain of bright green. Then her dad apologized and hugged her – the embrace trembling and desperate.

Her third was supporting Lynda when she needed the morning-after pill. They went to a clinic out of town so word couldn’t get around, one of her trusted older cousins posing as the obligatory parent to sign the paper. While waiting for the pharmacist, Laurie tried to assure Lynda that she wouldn’t be ‘totally disowned’ if, for any reason, the contraception didn’t work, and she wouldn’t have to ‘run away to work as a waitress in some interstate pit-stop full of gross, drooling truckers’. Lynda didn’t even tell Bob, only Annie was updated when they got back to Haddonfield, and Lynda passed off the week-long side effects of a migraine and nausea as stress from upcoming exams.

Her most recent memory was the aftermath of that Halloween.

It was while being ushered into an office that she was assured it was all just ‘procedure’, checking if the cut on her arm needed stitches or her fall from the stairs resulted in a sprain or fracture but, even then, in that numbing haze after all the horror, she knew it was to also ascertain her mental condition. The nurse dabbed at the cut with gauze, cooing how ‘brave’ Laurie was and Laurie _laughed_ – an involuntary and nervous response that earned her a funny look. She left before midnight with a bandaged arm, a compression stocking and a mandatory prescription of psyche evaluations for the next three weeks.

So it’s only natural that when Laurie sneaks around, unable to navigate labyrinthian hallways only distinguishable by an empty wheelchair or tightly-tucked bed, she has to keep reminding herself to _breathe_ through her already fraying nerves.

Alone, she works on a generator in what used to be a ward, yet even by the Entity’s unnerving standards, there’s something off and – are those _shackles_?

Maybe she’s being naive, but it seems... excessive. Then again, what did she know? This could have been an asylum, yet she always took those twisted tales of medical malpractice and strait-jacketed, thrashing patients with a grain of salt. As if the world collectively knows better than that now. Or never wanted to know in the first place.

Then again, she was fortunate enough to never have to think about that kind of world, as if the two can even be separated. She never stepped foot inside Smith’s Gro -

A metallic screech echoes down the hall.

Laurie immediately springs to her feet, fleeing from the generator. After rounding a few sharp corners, she quickly crouches and sneaks behind a pillar, hoping to break her trail. The Hillbilly lumbers after her but suddenly veers in an opposite direction, his chainsaw ripping through the air as he zooms away.

Rising to her feet, Laurie doesn’t question the change of course – scurrying through a room and searching for another generator. Turning into what looks like an office, she suddenly gets an ice-cold sense of déjà vu. The appearance of the room is unnervingly familiar, with its mahogany desk and towering bookcases – or maybe it’s just the atmosphere she recognizes, the tangible expense of every piece of furniture and ornament, that faux comfort too polished to be comfortable. All it’s missing is a box of tissues on the desk.

“ _And what do you see for yourself in the future?” Doctor Stevens asks. His tone is impassive – professional._

_Laurie stalls, she can barely think past getting home after this session. “College,” she responds._

“ _What about beyond your education? Do you see yourself going out with friends? Exploring a career path or having a family of your own?”_

_She remains silent, her gaze flickering around the room, distracted by a potted plant, a non-offensive abstract painting – all melting colors and shapes where she can’t even discern the illusion of a face. Then she reminds herself why she’s here – to prove that she can, well, **function**. “Maybe one day.” But the consideration sounds insincere._

“ _Which part?” His brow creases slightly, the hint of a smirk, suggesting incredulity._

_She feels stupid, but despite an impulse to fidget under the pressure of his enquiry for elaboration, she remains still – her hands clasped on her lap._

_Then Laurie imagines she’s someone else, forgetting her own name, forgetting that Halloween ever happened. And the words tumble out of her._

“ _Well, I’m going to Chicago, and I like the idea of living in a city for the first time because it means there’s always somewhere to go. Here, if you want to go anywhere with friends it’s all shut by eleven...”_

Detailing the hollow ideals that never came to fruition, what she remembers the most is the feeling of her thumbnail digging into her palm.

“Oh. Hey,” a voice whispers, demanding her attention.

Laurie looks towards the speaker, finding Feng climbing through the window. “ _Uh_ , hi.” Pretending that she hadn’t been staring at the empty chairs situated around the desk, she joins Feng on the generator.

Feng only spares a glance at Laurie, her brow furrowed in concentration. It seems like she’s got the hang of the machinery, her fingers nimbly dancing through the circuitry. A long silence passes between them.

“What are those skull things?” Feng suddenly asks, a little hushed but still audible.

Laurie’s blank for a second before realizing what she means. “Oh, they’re totems. But you only need to worry about breaking them if they’re on fire.”

“How can you break it if it’s on fire? Wouldn’t that burn?”

“ _U_ _m_ -” She never really noticed that. “No, it doesn’t… A lot of things here don’t make much sense. You get used to it.”

Feng looks unsatisfied. “I guess I don’t have much of a choice,” she says begrudgingly, shrugging.

Laurie is surprised at her pragmatic approach but doesn’t comment on it, refocusing on the generator.

Later, the two manage to escape at the cost of leaving Jake on a hook. Laurie almost runs back to save him, until Feng speeds past her and through the gate with no intention of helping out. Laurie frowns, put-out by the lack of team spirit but finds herself resorting to the same basic instinct of self-preservation when the Hillbilly charges towards her, narrowly missing cleaving through her back.

She turns away from the hospital, glad to leave it behind.

  
  


*

  
  


Haddonfield is noiseless, and the lane is nowhere near as lurid as the hospital.

Laurie revels in it, the tension once pulling at her shoulders now relaxing as she looks up at the sky, an endless night-blue pierced with stars. She wonders if she can recognize a constellation or two, trying to remember any astronomy textbooks from years ago. The brightest is Orion’s Belt and, sure enough, the triad of silver dots gazeback at her.

Maybe it’s the same sky that her parents are sleeping underneath, along with Tommy and Lindsey, maybe Annie and Lynda, too.

Annie and Lynda’s houses don’t line the street, but she prefers their absence. Both families eventually moved away after that night. Trying to retain a physical memory of her friends’ homes would be less a way to honor them and more like digging up their graves in an attempt to preserve their bodies.

She wonders if that’s why Michael’s sister’s room is so immaculately resurrected.

When she first realized where Michael had led (or not-so-subtly pushed) her to, she felt no different to walking through a mausoleum. Why did he want to lead her there in the first place? Was it a sadistic effort to gloat over his first kill? Or his grotesque way of introducing Judith to her?

Laurie finds herself drifting towards the Myers house. Michael himself remains absent – he _could_ be in a trial since there are eight of the team in total now. But his potential presence doesn’t deter her at all, striding past the sign bearing her surname and onto the porch.

The front door left ajar, she pushes it fully open and steps into his home, emboldened by the possibility that Michael won’t be hovering over her neck the whole way. The hallway is illuminated, but she knows better than to expect he’s only able to hide himself in darkness.

Quietly, her footsteps barely padding against the floorboards, she sneaks up the stairs, her gaze only flitting towards the living room. There’s no point in trying to peer through the shrouded distance to find him, his preferred greeting now seems to be more immediate - ensuring there’s barely a molecule of air between them. She glances over her shoulder as she reaches the landing; he’s sooner to appear right behind her than anywhere else.

Yet he doesn’t. Even while she carefully treads through Judith’s open door.

It’s all the assurance she needs that he’s not here.

Now, able to survey everything while she’s not under surveillance herself, Laurie allows her gaze to roam over details left unnoticed before. From what she remembers, the pastel-cast bedroom is still the same, but there’s no pool of blood in the center of it. The bed is perfectly made, almost institutionally so – the floral comforter tucked around the mattress on each side. On top of the dresser decorated with porcelain figures is a hand mirror, the handle gilded in real silver, the glass partly scratched. Judith’s closet is still open and pinned on the back of the door is a black-and-white magazine cut-out of Marlon Brando. No music beckons from within it.

Laurie peers inside, as if the fact the door is already partially opened allows her some semblance of permission. Judith’s fashion taste is sensible, most of the dresses are long sleeved and slightly boxy, there are plenty of cardigans that can accent any outfit and nothing is too figure-hugging apart from a couple of skirts and slim-lined trousers. But then when Laurie slides a hanger aside, she finds louder items hidden between; a mini-dress bursting with a swirling, kaleidoscopic pattern, a dog-tooth short skirt, a tiny, sleeveless polka-dot blouse.

She smiles a little, then her stare floats up.

Above Judith’s clothes is a high shelf, stacked with columns of paperback notepads.

Laurie squints, reaching for one at random. It takes some care to pry it from the rest but she manages to excavate it without them all tumbling on top of her. She turns it around in her hands but each cover is blank, along with the spine.

Opening it, she’s greeted by that musty, old-book fragrance and ‘1961’ printed on the first page in cursive. A small part of her wants to put it back, to respect the diary of a girl who is long since deceased – who she’s never met before – but when she turns the page, Laurie’s curiosity wins out.

  
  


_Thursday, September 14 th_

_Dear God,_

_Please tell Mom to cool it with the Jell-O. I get she has her ‘culinary phases’ but this one has been going on for way too long. Five nights in a row for dessert! As if it being orange or lime or blue raspberry (can you even get blue raspberries?) actually makes it taste any different. Jell-No! Worse, the sugar intake has SEVERELY impacted Michael’s sleeping schedule. I had to read to him five times before he finally went to sleep and even in the middle of the night he’s waking me up. It’s not like he has a nightmare or wants a glass of water, he just ignores the fact he has his own bed. I love the little man but if he stopped pulling on my eyelashes while I’m trying to get back to sleep (what is that?) I’d love him a whole lot more._

_Also, please, please, please convince Dad to let me see The Misfits. Oh, Marilyn looks like a GODDESS in this one._

  
  


_Saturday, September 16 th_

_Dear God,_

_How high does a skirt have to be for me to get grounded? Above the knees? I should not have let Sandra goad me into buying it, Dad will never let me walk outside with it on. Although… there’s always the option of smuggling it past him and changing in the school bathroom. He won’t know what he can’t see! _

  
  


_Tuesday, September 19 th_

_Dear God,_

_Please make sure Michael makes some friends (or just one if that’s asking too much!). This has been the fifth time that his daycare has told me he’s not socializing with anyone. I always thought he was just shy and quiet. He talks to me fine, but apparently nobody else has heard a peep out of him. I hope this is just a kid thing, I don’t want him to get bullied when he reaches middle school because of it. I tried telling Mom after dinner but she just said he’ll grow out of it… but if someone who takes care of kids professionally says so… I’ll see if there’s anything on it in the library tomorrow._

  
  


_Wednesday, September 20 th_

_There were a few articles on kids with ‘antisocial tendencies’ but Michael hasn’t ever got in trouble for hitting or biting anyone. So here’s hoping there’s no real cause for concern._

  
  


Laurie frowns, wondering why Judith has to be so concerned, why the daycare are deferring issues to Judith and not her parents. Her eyes flicker back and forth over page upon page, line upon line. Judith is a strikingly ordinary teenage girl, her priorities are school and friends and how far she can test the boundaries her father has set for her without being punished, yet Michael seems to cement a place above all of that. Still, Laurie is having trouble mentally matching Michael’s name to a boy-child’s face, despite having caught a glimpse of it in photos.

Feeling her legs turn stiff, she gravitates towards the seat of the vanity table – not wanting to ruin the bedspread by perching on it.

  
  


_Monday, October 17 th_

_Dear God,_

_Please fix what ever was making Mom cry so much today. It’s not like I can help. Whenever I ask she just goes ape and starts yelling about everything: the washing machine’s too loud, Dad needs to fix the garage door, Michael doesn’t have anyone to invite to his birthday party. Then the next day it’s back to ‘normal’ which only makes the day before feel more bizarre. I always thought adults only cry over what really matters, like break-ups or someone dying… but accidentally dropping a glass?_

_Oh well. Tomorrow’s a ‘clean slate’._

  
  


_Friday, October 21 st_

_Dear God,_

_Mrs. White can GET. BENT. I’ve been wearing this skirt for two weeks to her class and all of a sudden now it ‘doesn’t consign to the school’s regulations’. Last I checked, America is a FREE COUNTRY and it’s not as if I’m not wearing a bra like that stunt Ruth pulled. I bet this is all some kind of petty revenge over her lack of a life, just because she’s old and haggard and she keeps getting botched perms and everyone knows her husband left her for his secretary._

_UGH! What a witch!_

  
  


_Sunday, October 23 rd _

_Dear God,_

_I hope Michael is still too young to remember this day. What a nightmare. So what if Mom dropped the cake? It was store-bought anyway. I don’t think he even knew what was going on – or if he did he wasn’t bothered, I don’t know how to read him sometimes. I told him he could stay up later tonight since it’s his special day and all but we’d have to keep it a secret from Mom and Dad. Now, he’s just coloring. They’re not bad either! Especially for his age. But I think I’ve said ‘Oh, I love that shade of blue’ at least ten times in the past half-hour as I’m slowly being buried by sheets of Mickey Mouse’s oversized new-and-improved cobalt crayon shoes._

_Also, please tell Father McKenzie to get that new Brother Thomas to read a sermon next Sunday again… he’s sooooooo dreamy. I’m still paying attention, I swear!_

  
  


_Wednesday, October 26 th_

_Oh my_ ~~God~~ _gosh, oh my gosh, oh my GOSH! Sandra’s British cousin sent her a whole bunch of records and this new band – The Beatles! I’m in love! REAL LOVE! I’m sorry, Brother Thomas but Paul and I are meant to be…_

_I wanna hold your haaaaaand, I wanna hold your haaand…_

  
  


Laurie feels a light pressure on her back, jolting her from the teenage fawnings of Judith’s journal. She doesn’t realize she’s been grinning until her curved lips abruptly flat-line, turning to see nothing but dark blue.

She looks up, having to crane her neck back, and Michael stares down at her.

Immediately, she snaps the diary shut, places it on the vanity table and stands up, the only barrier between them being the small stool – wobbling slightly – not even a barrier at all.

“Uh – I ...” she stammers, her cheeks blushing as she mentally clambers for an apology.

Would he even care?

Anyone else would be offended that she’s been rifling through their deceased loved one’s most personal thoughts, but Michael isn’t just anyone.

If anything, he seems nonplussed by the intrusion – but then she finds it difficult to imagine him snatching the journal away. As if he could assume any kind of protective ownership over what belongs to his sister after committing sororicide.

No, she’s still in the habit of trying to deconstruct him by _human_ standards, not a murderer’s.

Self-consciously, she rubs at her neck, her gaze askance from his own. Her skin is already balmy from splitting nerves and they practically fracture when he leans down, drawing his face closer to hers. Instinctively, she grasps behind her, leaning as far back on the vanity table as it allows.

But her shoulders hit the mirror and it _slants_ , her spine suddenly reclining so her heels are lifted off the ground.

She yelps, hands shooting above her and grasping at his suit, clawing into the fabric for leverage against gravity, but she doesn’t need to – he’s bending over far enough that she’s pinned between his chest and the vanity mirror.

If this were her own home, she would have risked tumbling backwards and breaking the desk in the fall to escape him but, as the table belongs to Judith, Laurie finds herself in the suffocating predicament of wanting to ensure the girl’s belongings _aren’t_ destroyed.

Trapped underneath Michael, Laurie winces as she tries to ignore the feeling of her bust and midriff pressed against him. But if his mismatched and ragged breaths are any indication – he’s thriving on their proximity.

His right hand grips her firm about the waist, as if he doesn’t trust the furniture enough to hold her in place for him. His left hand – she can’t feel it, nor see it, and that’s somehow more worrying than knowing the other is locked onto her.

Leaning towards the precipice of being parallel to one another, his gaze is a perennial weight over her face. Despite her being able to meet it many times before, fearful but resilient all the same, Laurie can’t bear looking at him now, a heatwave burning through the entire length of her like a sickly and oppressive fever, aching with something akin to humiliation but not.

She doesn’t know what to expect, whether he’ll clasp her chin and force her to look at him, whether he’ll lean down further and tip her over even more, whether he even knows how perverse he’s being.

His stare trails away from her face. She doesn’t have to look to know. And soon there is a soft tugging by the nape of her neck, making her skin prickle.

He’s stroking her hair against the surface of the mirror, inspecting the sinuous patterns of each flaxen strand like light dappling a river.

Laurie inhales deeply, her fever cooling as she stares at him from the corner of her eye, struck by the innocence of the gesture.

Maybe _she’s_ the one who’s perverse.

Her grip on his coveralls eases, less desperate, and she rolls her head around to directly look at him.

If she were able to divorce the mask from all its meaning, the deaths it has seen, the pain it has wrought, if it was painted and framed and immortalized as an unmoving image, she would almost think it’s captivating in its own inanimate yet intimate way.

One of her hands leaves his chest to reach for his jaw, her touch both deliberate and tentative, fingertips shying from the latex before settling on his cheek.

She doesn’t have to wonder if he feels it. He immediately looks up, no longer transfixed by the tendrils splayed out underneath him but succumbing to the sensation of her caress.

Laurie silences a sigh – stifling and savoring that heady rush of power that can never be too familiar.

Yet it’s barely even a caress, the non-pressure of her fingertips only tracing his silicone flesh.

“You can… actually feel that?” she asks, the question slightly hoarse around the edges.

He simply gazes down at her, his face inches above hers.

She brings her other hand up, skirting over his collar to graze over his adjacent cheek.

His chest vibrates against her own with a buried sound. And that fever crawls back, making her swallow to whet her throat – dry from a mouth half-parted.

Her gaze shimmers towards his lips. She can imagine prying them open, just the same as he did to her.

But it is just her imagination.

Her fingers slip away from his skin and her hands fall empty against her chest.

He laments the absence of her touch, sinking his face into the crook under her jaw. She always expects it to be cold – to embody its indifferent veneer in temperature, too - but it is as warm as any other flesh.

Still, she does not reach for him, the coolness of the glass against her back a sobering reminder of who had stared into this mirror the most; his first victim.

Disgust worms its way through her stomach like rot consuming a carcass, making her jaw clench shut and hands ball up into fists.

But it’s at herself, how she has to suppress a whimper at the expansion and retraction of his chest – melding into hers, clenching her thighs together at the hypnotic and half-broken sound of his breathing, unable to stop herself wondering how his breath would feel over her skin, humid and longing and constant; the most constant noise she hears in this hell.

It takes more resistance from herself than Laurie would like to push against him, wrangling her hands from between them to behind her – gripping the edge of the table and crooking her elbows. He lets her push them both up to stand, each of them straightening, but he still has to curve his spine to keep himself buried against her.

As soon as she tries to step away, he clamps an arm around the small of her back, the other a vice over her shoulder blades.

“Mi-” she starts, the syllable so muffled against his chest that she has to tilt her chin up. “Michael...” she warns.

Saying his name only makes his embrace more stifling; if one pair of lungs could touch another.

“I’m not… I’m not going to leave forever. You know I’m coming back,” she intones. There’s nothing soothing nor encouraging about the statement.

She waits. A few beats pass and nothing happens, no slide of a hand or twitch of a finger.

Maybe she has no choice but to impart some tenderness, one of her hands reaching above her height to gently grasp his shoulder.

Her voice is a soft murmur, “You can always carry me there.”

And she’s weightless.

  
  


*

Trying to ignore the phantom hold of Michael’s lingering embrace, Laurie trudges through the woods. After a lengthy walk, where she finds her arms hugging herself despite a non-existent chill, she stumbles across Meg - crouched beside the boulder with its carved eye, flashlight in hand. She stares at the eye with an intensity that reminds Laurie of archaeologists excavating caves hiding prehistoric paintings.

“Waiting for it to blink?” Laurie greets.

Meg looks up, alert. Her responding smile delayed as she stands up. “Maybe? I don’t know… it just makes me think...”

Laurie remains silent, waiting for her to continue.

“You remember when we tried to pull that shit in the basement – against the Trapper?”

Laurie nods. The bruise on her arm has since faded.

“Well, after he… when I was the only one left. He started saying all this weird shit like,” her voice dips, imitating a gravelly, hyper-masculine tone, “ _‘Don’t think you have more chances then you know you do – more control than you do,’_ and, _‘You’re clever but don’t start thinking this is a game where you can break the rules and still win. Others have tried.’”_

Laurie’s brow shoots up, eyes widening.

“At the time I was just so _mad_ that I didn’t really listen to what he was saying but… now.” She inhales deeply, then lets out a despondent sigh.

“Did he say what happened to them – the ‘ _others_ ’ who tried?”

“No. By then he was trying to shove me into the hatch. Which took for-fucking- _ever._ I wanted to die.”

Laurie frowns. “Why?”

Meg is quiet, pensive for a long pause, then, “Once I did this marathon, right, and just a few meters from the finish line I sprain my ankle – someone dropped their water bottle or whatever – but _any_ way, I can’t stand - let alone run for shit. But then one of the other runners just picks me up and helps me get to the end.”

Laurie squints, guessing what she’s trying to say. “You… don’t like being helped?”

“No! No, it’s not like that it’s just… Let me start over.” She waves off her previous elaboration. “When we all escape, or one of us finds the hatch it’s like - that’s what _we_ did. But if it’s just _give_ _n_ to us by the thing we’re fighting against...”

“You want to earn it.”

“Yeah! And, like,” Meg crosses her arms, the flashlight beam veering off to pierce through the foliage. “Earning our survival – that makes it _ours_. I mean, how do you feel when Michael lets you go?”

Laurie blanches, the question catching her off-guard. Even in retrospect, she’s not sure if she can neatly distil the experience into a single, identifiable emotion.

Can power even be an emotion? Is that the only way she can surmise forcing kindness from someone capable of so much cruelty? “ _Uh_ , relieved, I guess?” she settles on, opting for something non-suspect.

“But doesn’t it piss you off just a little? Because it’s not _you_ that fought for that escape – so it’s not escaping at all. It’s him _allowing_ -”

Something clicks in Laurie’s mind, and she can’t help interrupting Meg. “He can control whether you live just as much as whether you can die.”

Meg waves the flashlight at her – making Laurie blink rapidly. “Right! That’s it! That’s why it makes me feel so… _God_. Like, they can let us live but we can’t kill them? What the fuck is up with _that_ double standard?”

Laurie laughs a little, the sound brief. “I never really thought about it like that before.”

Then Meg’s shoulders slump. “My mom always said I’m too easy to anger. Fat lot of good it’s doing me – won’t get anywhere with it here.”

While Laurie understands where Meg is coming from, she can’t say she feels the same. So she offers a conciliatory, “Neither will staring at a rock, apparently. Come on, I remember Jake mentioned something about snagging a few cereal bars.”

Meg doesn’t need to be coerced, the flashlight clicking off as she grins with a, “Oh, fuck yeah.” But then she turns to face Laurie on their short path back to the campfire, asking, “So what’re you doing out here? You weren’t in the trial, weren’t you?”

Laurie’s stomach lurches. She can’t exactly lie and say she _was_ in case the others call her out on it. “No, I…” Nonetheless, she’s become a proficient liar, as long as there’s an inkling of fact. “I wanted to see home.”

Meg stops. “But you didn’t actually… _go_ home, right?”

And that response is all Laurie needs to decide on her own.

She shakes her head, as if the assumption Meg drew is ridiculous. “No, of course not. I was just… window-shopping. Seeing if it was there, you know.”

Meg sighs, relieved. “Good. I don’t trust that guy being alone with you for a second.”

Laurie huffs, but she’s not sure why she’s amused. “Neither do I.”

  
  


*

  
  


Eventually, Laurie works up the confidence to approach Claudette.

But she still wrings her hands, unsure of how exactly to amend their short discussion. While it’s been made clear there is no blame laid on her, she still bears a shame she can’t shake off.

‘ _What else were you supposed to do? Just let poor_ _four-eyes_ _hang?_ _Come on, there are worse sacrifices than letting_ _a guy_ _hug you, Laurie,’_ Annie would assure her.

_But what if it’s not enough next time?_

Even Lynda echoes some advice, _‘He’s a **guy**. You play hard-to-get long enough and he’ll be thankful for anything he **can** get.’ _

How insane is this place making her that she’s applying dating advice to a murderer? As if the stack of _Cosmopolitan_ magazines that she, Annie and Lynda used to giggle through at sleepovers had an article on ‘How to Save Your Friends From the Serial Killer Who Has a Crush on You’. She could have used _that_ three years ago.

Rationally, she knows she shouldn’t carry the responsibility of his actions but everything here is so irrational – everything about _him_ functions on its own corrupted logic.

Even while she tries to address the situation to Claudette - she can barely make sense of it, both of them sat in the periphery of the campfire’s glow, backs against the same wide trunk of a tree.

“Look, I… wish I could give you some kind of explanation but not even I...” Laurie trails off.

Claudette is so calm, it’s almost irritating. “It’s not that I want an explanation I’m just _worried_ -”

“But what do you want me to do?” she defends, indignant, her pitch climbing. “You said so yourself, it’s not _my_ fault -”

“Hey, hey, just listen for a sec,” Claudette placates, gently grasping Laurie’s shoulder.

Laurie’s agitation prickles at the effort to calm her – _knowing_ it’s an effort to calm her – but she doesn’t brush it off.

“First of all, I worry about everyone equally, so don’t think you win out above everyone else just because you’ve got... special circumstances with your killer. Second of all, I know you’re doing the best you can in any given situation, I’m not asking you to do more or less than what you already are. And last of all… I haven’t thought that far yet. Just repeat the first two points over until they stick.”

Laurie laughs, surprised at how easy it feels, her irritation fading. Claudette smiles back at her.

“I’m sorry. It’s just… it’s not exactly easy to _not_ think about it, if that makes any sense, and I don’t want anyone to die – or worse – because of him. And the last time we spoke, I _knew_ you weren’t accusing me but I felt...”

“Laurie, I’m never here to judge you. I was just so... _scared_. And I just wanted to talk it through until it went away, y’know?”

But she doesn’t know. All she knows about fear is holding onto it, like a festering wound on a limb that needs to be amputated; like there was her life before him – then after him, and this limbo of an unlife means just accepting that fear is here to stay, unbidden and incorrigible but always here, nonetheless.

Laurie looks down, picking at the hem of her jeans. “I’m sorry. I don’t want you to feel like you can’t talk to me. I know I’m not the only one having a crisis,” she says, almost wincing at how heavy her voice sounds – so she makes a concerted effort to lighten it, looking back up at Claudette. “Maybe I need to look at this as an exercise in _not_ second-guessing everyone and expecting the worst. At least, nobody here. With _some_ it’s necessary.”

Claudette’s mouth opens and closes, as if she were initially going to protest that the mindset should be applied to anyone at all, but then she nods. “Right. From now on we save second-guessing for guys in masks who have no tell.”

Laurie snorts. Though she knows Michael has a few tells here and there.

The resolution with Claudette inspires her to finally talk to Dwight again, too. He tries to wave off the ‘whole Black Christmas thing’ (as he termed it) but she knows that, even by the standards the Entity has set for them, it was a shock to endure.

“I guess it was a _little_ scary but… we all escaped. So that took the edge off.” He nods, as if re-assuring himself more than her.

“Come on, it was more than a little scary,” Laurie jibes.

“What are you trying to do, make me admit I peed my pants?” He shoots back in kind, then smacks a hand against his forehead. “Oh, shit, guess you got me there.”

Laurie smirks, but doesn’t laugh. Not that it deters Dwight at all.

“So, Miss Strode, how does it feel to have escaped Michael Myers yet again?” Dwight asks in a talk-show-host impression, holding an invisible microphone in her face.

She instinctively jerks back slightly before playing along with the bit. “Same old. But I could ask you the same.”

“ _Please_ , I’ve only escaped him twice! You’re the expert here. Do tell, what’s your secret?”

Laurie digs through her brain for a response yet only comes up with blanks.

“Oh, she’s holding out on us, folks. Maybe next week she’ll reveal all – seriously, though,” and the impression suddenly drops, “what did you do to make him let go?”

Claudette hasn’t told him.

The revelation leaves her all the more speechless for a few seconds, until Dwight’s brow arches – expectant.

“I, uh…” She chooses to disguise the truth with a joke, “I seduced him, of course.”

And Dwight chuckles, choosing not to second-guess it.

  
  


*

  
  


Trials come and go, everyone noticing they haven’t encountered the new killer yet. They get their hopes up, joking that Feng only comes as a ‘package deal’ with the hospital but they know it’s too good to be true.

After the introduction of the asylum, Haddonfield and the swamp, they’ve all deduced by now that each realm held a particular significance to their respective killer. So when the hospital came to be, their only natural assumption was a doctor – since the nurse role had already been fulfilled.

The idea only unsettles Laurie. It’s one thing for someone to wake up one night and suddenly grab a knife, deciding to kill their family, but it’s a whole other ballpark processing that someone sworn to help others would exploit that authority to -

She’s being naive again.

And naivete helps nobody here, especially when Laurie blinks and opens her eyes to the maze of tiled hallways, having to swallow down her dread, bracing herself for the possibility – no, inevitability - of who the Entity has selected to terrorize them.

She can only be so lucky, after all, and most of her luck seems to reserve itself for Mich – _against_ Michael.

Still, she diligently finds a generator, which proves to be a task in itself, the telltale floodlights non-existent beneath the enclosed roof.

No sooner than her kneeling down to untangle the wiring, and the ground rumbles.

She looks at the floor, her brow furrowing as she feels a tingling sting in her feet like pins and needles.

Before she can act on any fight or flight instinct, she’s suddenly jolted to stand by a force that rattles her bones, shocking a scream out of her and setting her muscles on fire – at least, it feels like that, but she’s still able to sprint through a doorway and into a disused bathroom, her senses overruled by a primal panic to just run.

Trying to evade the encroaching pulse, she vaults over a window with no concern for the loud _thunk,_ only driven by a mindless impulse. She doesn’t even pay attention to the room she rushes through, a ring of empty chairs only built to restrain - orbiting past her periphery before she clambers up a flight of stairs. What ever that electricity came from, it’s close and it’s _laughing_ and just as she climbs over another window with no thought to look behind her, she can’t move – grabbed by the back of her blouse and hauled onto a shoulder.

Squirming free is futile as she’s carried back down the steps, only able to see a bleary white-coated back before she’s heaved onto a hook. She cries out, the agony searing and familiar. But any pain quickly pales compared to the horror of the face in front of her.

He’s all eyes and teeth and metal wire, a set of braces drilled into his skull and gums to create a hyperbolic grin, the very same apparatus stretching his eyelids back so his stare is constantly wide-open; unblinking.

It is a stare that is the complete antithesis of Michael’s and that only makes it worse, terrifying in its tortured and unnatural exposure.

Again, the Doctor laughs as if he derives some sick joy from her suffering, then he charges away to find his next victim.

She’s not even sure she wants to be saved if it means enduring this. His face still flickers in her retinas like an optically injected hallucination, and part of her fears he can read her thoughts, possibly even control them. But dying so early is not her luxury to take, as she’s quickly lifted off the hook – Nea helping her to find her footing. Her head is screeching with static, like she can’t tune her brain into the right radio station to hear herself think. She can’t even talk, her jaw nailed shut. Nea’s voice is nothing but swarming noise as Laurie covers her face with her hands, unable to even count to ten as she suddenly screams.

Her skull feels like it’s being drilled open.

She feels Nea tugging on her shirt insistently but it’s only the re-emerging pulse that forces Laurie into action, careening forward and through the first doorway she sees. Nea yells something behind her but the syllables are indistinct, no clearer than if she shouted underwater.

It takes Laurie a few sharp turns until the heartbeat quietens but she isn’t granted the reprieve of silence. Blindly, she grasps at the walls, hands pawing over cold, cracked tiles and grout. She glances at a drain in the floor, looking away as she imagines nothing but blood and bile to spew up from it. There’s a stench like rot and ammonia, as if someone has tried to cover the smell of decaying corpses with disinfectant. It’s what she imagines a morgue to smell like, what this place really is. No lives have ever been saved here, only tortured and destroyed.

Suddenly, her fingers find the handle of a locker, and with no further thought - she hides herself away.

Inside, the enclosed darkness is somehow sobering.

The white noise scratching her senses darkens, dimming into a distant tinnitus ring. She can feel her hands pressed against the doors, skin on wood, she can hear her breath as it gradually steadies, compliant and stable and something close to sane.

There is nothing inside of here but her and, for a single moment, she is entirely alone and entirely herself again.

Then a scream – Nea is hooked. But while the noise is more abrasive than what Laurie’s used to, it doesn’t send her into a frenzy.

Opening the locker, she steps into a bathroom and soon hears a generator nearby. It’s abandoned, churning by itself, but when she begins to piece it back together, it immediately short circuits – spitting sparks at her.

Laurie feels the ground shaking under her heels again and immediately abandons her task, sprinting down the hall. She runs fast enough to avoid the chain of lightning clamoring over the walls and floor towards her - narrowly missing her heels hurtling down the corridor. There’s no way to see where he is, her sight cut off by a never-ending sequence of boxed-in rooms, so she just keeps running, fighting the impending threat of her mind being taken from her again.

All she’s doing is delaying the inevitable. Even when she knew to expect it from the start.

The office around her quakes, her skeleton shocked into immobility.

Petrified, she’s struck down, the barbed baton beating a shriek out of her as she falls. She’s never hauled up to be hooked, a weight pressing down on her back so she can’t even wipe the blood from her chin, the splitting pain of biting through her tongue from the thunder-strike only hitting her now.

There’s a looming buzz around her ears, like a swarm of chittering insects; that shrill, distorted laughter. She squeezes her eyes shut.

Electricity shatters through her skull and her scream is nothing but a trapped and muted cry, barred by her gritting teeth. The shock is an erasure, carving countless paths through her brain until it’s cleared of any memory, destroying any knowledge of who she is; photographs and houses and voiceless faces burning into nothing.

Steam pouring out of her ears, the girl dies, incapable of recalling the first letter of her own name.

  
  


*

  
  


_Saturday, October 1 st _

_Dear God,_

_I still like to wake up early on the weekend, the rising sun is so beautiful! Even though it’s fall and the days will soon be gray, I can never predict what color the morning sky will be. Today, it was violet and the clouds looked like angel’s wings over every house in Haddonfield._

  
  


*

  
  


Laurie stumbles into the street, desperate for a sense of familiarity. A row of houses facing another row of houses, she knows them, she’s sure of it, but why is remembering who they belong to so hard?

She catches her foot on the curb, almost falling before she manages to break the fall herself, just managing to regain her balance. She looks up at the home immediately in front of her, its grey-panelled walls and shuttered windows, the balcony…

It _holds_ something; the door is ajar.

Impulsively, she runs across its front yard, over the brick patio and through the entrance. Pushing the door open,she reaches beside her to switch on the lights, but when it clicks the room remains unlit.

Brow creasing together in confusion, she surveys the room, only to find it’s empty, lacking all the clutter and creature comforts that she _knows_ comes hand-in-hand with this home. The furniture is sparse, onlya couch and a TV and a lamp by the wind-

The couch is the wrong color.

The Wallaces reupholstered the old, brown fabric with a pin-stripegreen design. But even dimmed, the difference in the pattern is noticeable - alarming, even, especially when Laurie draws closer towards it.

There’s a tear in one of the seat cushions.

She reaches down, her fingers brushing the ripped fibres. It’s like retracing a memory, one she only remembers in its sharpest moments – the silver blade plunging down through her periphery.

But she’s not reliving it.

Her furrowed stare flickers down, spotting her knitting bag propped against the couch’s feet. There’s a crochet needle missing but no animal terror petrifies her at the absence, only a disturbing realization:

This home is not exhumed from just her memory alone.

A steady breath signals from ahead of her, as if she could summon him just by remembering him.

Looking up, she narrows her gaze on an open window but there is no movement, no passing shadow. The curtain doesn’t even flutter.

He breathes again – behind her – and she spins around. But all she’s met with is empty space – no figure standing in the open doorway.

He’s toying with her.

She looks around the room from the spot, head turning in dizzying directions, her stare prying through particularly shrouded corners, but each of them seem too small to contain his frame.

Experimentally, she calls, “Michael?”

And there’s a creak upstairs.

She follows after the sound, grasping the handrail as she ascends a few steps. Then she stops.

Call it another wave of déjà vu or call it a premonition, she knows where she’s being led to. In this game of hide and seek, there is no mystery to where she will find him. Yet, from this certainty, she questions what exactly he gets out of this.

How much proof does he want that she remembers that night?

‘ _Or maybe he’s just bored and wants to play,’_ Annie jibes.

Laurie grimaces, immediately uncomfortable at the notion of infantilizing him. Boys are unintentionally cruel, incapable of foreseeing the consequences of yanking on a dog’s tail until they’re bitten or pulling on a girl’s pigtails until she’s crying. Michael, however -

_Stabbing your sister doesn’t sound like **playing** to me._

Turning around, Laurie looks at the open doorway, tempted to deny appeasing him.

Maybe she can subvert _his_ expectations for once.

Maybe she should be more shocked at her ability to read him so soon after she’s regained herself. As if knowing him harmonizes with knowing herself.

She descends back down the stairs, striding towards the front door.

Before she can even take a single step outside, her feet are lifted off the ground – along with the rest of her. She yelps, but there’s no sound – the air knocked out of her at the sudden loss of gravity.

Michael wrangles her into his arms much the same as he did in their last trial, enfolding her so she’s perched against his chest. She glares at him, but he doesn’t look at her, marching back up the stairs and across the second storey landing. She doesn’t bother fighting, knowing there’s no point.

It only takes a few seconds and they’re in a bedroom – _the_ bedroom – Michael stopping.

Something cracks under the weight of his boots, and Laurie peers down to see small, broken pieces of wooden debris.

Her gaze lifts upwards and she sees the giant cavity in the louvred doors.

She can’t quite identify the feeling that forces her lips to part, maybe because it’s hard to feel anything but Michael holding her – and her clinging to him right back.

And that’s exactly it.

The memory of hiding in that closet, scrounging for a wire hanger while he beat the doors in, the light – flickering on and off and on and off as he tried to wrestle his way in, piercing his eye with the wire - blinding him, grasping for the knife - stabbing him.

For the first time in three years, she replays the entirety of it in her mind.

And she doesn’t feel a thing. Even with the very same man carrying her.

She looks at him, incredulous, to find his unreadable gaze already set upon her face.

Scratch that: _almost_ unreadable.

“What – you want me to blind you again?” she asks, unimpressed.

He huffs, almost like he’s-

No.

Michael doesn’t laugh. Michael _can’t_ laugh. It’s just a vital shift in his breathing, only perceptible because it broke the cyclical cadence of inhalation and exhalation. His chest expands underneath her hand and she habitually pinches the fabric of his suit. There’s a cold toughness to it and when she looks, a tiny patch beneath her fingers glistens like a drop of oil in dark water.

Dried blood.

“ _Ugh.”_ Immediately, she lets go, trying to wrestle herself out of his arms.

He takes the hint, releasing her so she can set her feet back on the ground but she gets the impression it’s only because he stands between her and the door. There _is_ the balcony, however Laurie already tires of checking any escape contingency.

It’s hard to name what exactly she’s escaping from anymore when it’s him.

She looks back at the broken closet again, stepping towards it to peer through the gaping hole, and he nudges against her shoulder.

She frowns at him. “Here.” Opening the closet, she steps inside then turns around to face him, crossing her arms. “You found me. Happy now?”

He stares at her, half-leaning inside the small space, blank as ever. The lightbulb briefly flickers beside his face.

“I stab you with a coat hanger, you drop your knife…” she recalls with exasperation, as if she’s walking through a set of cues an actor keeps forgetting. “I stab you with said knife, you collapse...” And she sidles back out of the closet, pushing past him - his broadness almost blocking the door. “I throw your knife on ground, think it’s all over, Tommy and Lindsey are screaming outside...” she walks through the bedroom entrance – out into the hall, “and then you -”

He grabs her by the shoulders - spinning her around, but before his hands close around her neck, she grips one of his wrists – bringing the re-enactment to an abrupt halt.

Her heartbeat hammers inside her chest but her glare up at him is resolute, along with her grasp (despite her closed fingers barely meeting her thumb).

Only one of his hands is suspended between them, however, and the other easily clutches its destination, fingers tightening around her neck – thumb pressing into her throat.

She can’t feel any contracting pain, and she assumes it’s because of the inexplicable rules of this realm, but then she remembers the mirror shard stinging her palm.

Little by little, her grasp loosens around his wrist. His arm slides forward through her open palm, his fingertips grazing over her cheek, stroking down her jawline and finally settling to mirror his other hand around her neck.

She blinks, slightly dazed from the warmth of his hold – firm and encompassing but painless.

“And… and then I...” she breathes, reaches for the hem of his mask.

His sigh is sharp but he doesn’t move – not even a fraction.

Rather than grasping the layer of latex, she buries her fingers beneath it, watching how her knuckles writhe under his skin like tree roots digging for purchase beneath cemented ground. She can feel the damp clamor of his skin and a brief constriction as he swallows.

Yet, she has no desire to pull the mask off.

Instead, she pushes him, her other hand pressing against his shoulder to force him back.

He lets her, one foot treading behind the other as hers follow in tandem. Until his shoulders thump against the wall.

She’s not even choking him yet his muffled breaths are plosive and heavy, hoarse gasps a staccato compared to his regular rhythm. Her hand gripping his coveralls lets go, rising so her fingertips can feel the sliver of skin between his collar and mask.

One of his fists leaves her neck to grab her by the front of her blouse, pulling her into him so they’re flush against one another. A quiet sound of surprise escapes her, then his arms encircle around the small of her back to sew them together.

Blood floods through her - amplifying her senses, and she realizes she’s bitten her lips shut so she can hear him; the only sound in the entire house his breathing.

No matter how close they are, it never seems to be close enough for him.

There’s nothing to gain from this. They’re not in a trial, she’s not saving anyone, there’s no flimsy justification to absolve her from any guilt as she indulges her fascination with her should-be murderer.

Yet...

Fingers still melded under his latex neck, she runs her exposed thumb back and forth over his throat – just below the mask’s hem, watching the crescent-edge of her nail drag over his skin, too blunt to draw blood.

His hand clenches at the material of her shirt, and she can hear a couple of stitches snapping. His fingers around her neck squeeze before loosening, then his head tilts back.

He bares his neck like an invitation for her to slit his throat.

With her unburied hand, she reaches into her pocket for the mirror shard, her gaze never straying from his throat, and the glass soon glistens over the column of pulsing flesh. Curious, she presses the point up underneath his chin yet his head doesn’t recede any further back at the threat.

She looks up to see the pale glimmer of an eye trained on her face, both iris and pupil opaque with a clear cloud of white. As if he can still see her with it.

He refuses to lean back an inch more because then he wouldn’t be able to see her at all.

The stinging in her hands is dull, inconsequential in comparison to the pain it could cause him. Yet she doesn’t press the weapon past the plastic. Her fist tremors, until she feels him trade his grasp on her waist for her wrist – steadying it and guiding the glass blade for her – back to where her thumb rests on his throat.

It shouldn’t look so graceful.

Slowly pulling at her, he angles the razor-jagged point up and into his flesh. He murmurs a fractured groan, and she can feel how the mirror penetrates through his skin, piercing a shallow cut.

In the darkened hall, his blood is black; lightless and slithering, the single liquescent thread trailing over the mirror, trickling over her knuckles then disappearing beneath his fist. It is warm over her skin, like a slant of sunlight through half-open blinds.

And she hasn’t felt the sun in so long.

Her thumb wipes the blood from the glass and in doing so, she can see her own reflection for the briefest second; her lips parted, her pupil so dilated that she cannot recognize her own gaze.

Or she does – just from someone else.

Gasping, she lets go of the blade.

It slips from her grasp, tumbling off Michael’s chest then falling down through the air, smashing over the floor.

She looks down, and among the inscrutable darkness of his shadow, the broken pieces dapple the ground like nameless constellations.

Entranced, she can feel his lips and nose graze over the crown of her head, his grasp on her wrist slipping to her hand so they are palm to palm – skin slick with his blood.

She squeezes her eyes shut, trying to will herself to break away from him but she is already drowned in his embrace, her lips parting to swallow air that doesn’t exist. He is not just the shark but the water, engulfing her like a furling and inexorable wave.

So she clings tighter - as if he can keep her from sinking. Her hand near his shoulder sliding up and around the nape of his neck, down over his shoulder blade, and she can measure the arch of his back – how far he has to bend down and manipulate his height to press his face into her hair.

She opens her eyes and tilts her face up, causing his lips to brush against her brow-bone and temple and it steals her breath.

And he notices.

Of course he notices; how she inhales sharply, how her grip tightens, how she leans into the accidental gesture, and so he turns deliberate, silicone lips lacing over her cheek, her forehead, her eyelids, her nose, her chin -

Until she whispers, “Why couldn’t you have just killed me?” against his perpetually closed mouth.

Michael’s only answer is devoting his lips to hers in a simulacrum of a kiss.

And he is as warm as his blood.

*

Laurie doesn’t know how long they remained together, his lips ceaselessly measuring her everywhere from hairline to jawline, conjuring a litany of gasps and sighs until she couldn’t tell whose breath was whose.

The only cause to separate them is the Entity, spiriting her away and into another trial.

She dies in a daze, stumbling over herself, short-circuiting generators, easily felled by the Nurse, blushing like she’s caught the sun, drunk off the irrevocable non-touch of his kisses still haunting her skin.

This time, she doesn’t hate him as much as she hates herself for the persistent ache between her legs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No trial against Michael in this one! I'm starting to stray from the typical formula the previous chapters have followed - don't want everything getting TOO predictable.
> 
> As far as I know, The Beatles weren't really a thing until 1963... but Judith is definitely a boy band type, and she deserves history being rewritten a couple of years to give her one of the best.


End file.
